UAIE Writing Helper — Validation Against Real Pupil Writing (Set 2)

A second set of genuine senior-school scripts, transcribed uncorrected and set against the tool.

Prepared 8 June 2026 · real senior-school scripts · name and every identifying detail removed · British English · misspellings transcribed from the originals, uncorrected

Why a second set. The first validation worked from one pupil’s scripts; this set widens the evidence with another pupil’s work — a film review, two poetry appreciations (Arnold’s Dover Beach and Hardy’s The Darkling Thrush), a short-story answer on Dahl’s The Sound Machine, a career piece, and a lockdown essay. Every passage is the pupil’s own writing, transcribed exactly, with no name attached. Each table below shows what the tool does with the genuine error, including, in plain sight, the errors it cannot reach — and the corrections this set obliged us to add.

1Mechanical misspellings — cleared cleanly

The ordinary dyslexic seam: the recoverable misspellings the tool exists to clear. Every one below was caught and corrected against the live engine.

As written	→	As written	→
`persue`	pursue	`acadomic`	academic
`diffrent`	different	`intrests`	interests
`espically`	especially	`financail`	financial
`privilage`	privilege	`consistant`	consistent
`challanging`	challenging	`achivements`	achievements
`strenghts`	strengths	`aniexty`	anxiety
`prestigeous`	prestigious	`niether`	neither
`immidiatly`	immediately	`knowlege`	knowledge
`apphearance`	appearance	`centry`	century

2The long tail — what this set found, and fixed

Real text earns its keep by breaking the tool where invented sentences would not. Two faults surfaced, and both are now mended.

Deep garble the tool flagged but could not first recover

As written	Before	Now
`stangnated`, `protagnist`, `lonliness`, `medatative`	flagged, target not recovered	→ stagnated, protagonist, loneliness, meditative
`verus`, `pausaible`, `suhrises`	flagged, target buried in the list	→ versus, plausible, surprises

Correct words that were being wrongly underlined

The scripts reach for advanced vocabulary, and twenty-one correct words were absent from the dictionary — so the tool underlined them in error. All are now silent.

meditative · baffled · joyfully · sorrowful · spectre · gloomy · hopelessness · flickering · industrialisation · stagnated · stagnant · reschedule · socialise · loneliness · quarantine · protagonist · downfall · darkling · thrush · ecstatic · monotonous

A spell-checker that underlines spectre and melancholy teaches a young writer to distrust the very words growth brings. Each was verified silent against the live engine after the fix.

3The literary canon in the scripts — the lexicon at work

These scripts lean on named writers, and they test the lexicon decisions directly. A correctly written canonical name is left silent; a misspelt one is mended.

In the script	Tool’s response	Verdict
`Matthew` Arnold, Thomas `Hardy`, Roald Dahl	silent	correct names, left untouched
`Mathew` (for the poet’s first name)	→ the correct spelling	misspelling mended
`hardy` (lower case, for the poet)	silent	a valid everyday word — the capital is a Tier-2 judgement, by design

Hardy, Frost, Pope, Gray and their kind are deliberately treated as ordinary words offline: flagging them would underline common English on every page. Whether the poet’s capital is wanted is decided in context by Tier 2, not guessed by a word list.

4Real-word substitutions — the Tier-2 cases

The clearest proof of the boundary. Each word below is spelled perfectly; only the choice is wrong, so a spell-checker is right to stay silent. These are exactly the catches the optional “Read it for Sense” layer is built for.

In the script	Meant	Tool (Tier 1)
“part of a fine `collage`”	college	silent — a valid word
“unsure `weather` the examination would be held”	whether	silent — a valid word
“by means of natural `section`”	selection	silent — a valid word

❖ ❖ ❖

5The honest limits

The same three classes sit outside a dictionary tool’s reach, shown plainly rather than hidden:

Real-word substitutions — collage for college, weather for whether, section for selection. The spelling is valid; only the sense is wrong. This is the Tier-2 “Read it for Sense” case.
Capitalised ordinary words — a lower-case hardy for the poet is left alone, because that same rule is what guarantees a child’s own name is never flagged. The capital belongs to context, not to a rule.
The deep long tail — badly mangled words. Where this set exposed them (stangnated, medatative and the rest), they are now recovered; the residue beyond reach remains the Tier-2 case.

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