The Tutoring Scene: What grade do the sentences in your manuscript rate?

Yesterday, while working with a student on the vocabulary word "harsh," the young boy wrote this sentence: "The man in the green shirt was harsh." Three immediate problems stand out. First, the only verb is a state-of-being verb which doesn't show action. Second, what does wearing a green shirt have to do with being harsh? Third, as with most students, he started the sentence incorporating the word "the."

I directed the student to improved sentence beginnings, such as using a prepositional phrase or even a subordinating conjunction. For instance, "When the girl in the back row tossed a note to her friend, the teacher banged his teaching stick on the desk and uttered harsh words." Here the reader gets a view of setting (classroom), movement in action (a note flying), plus sound (crack of pointer).

What the student finally wrote was this: "The gray-haired man spoke harsh words as he tripped over a cat and got tangled in his cane." Although the boy began with "the," the adjectives that follow add to the explanation of why the man might have fallen, which presents fragility. And, even though the reader gets no sense of setting, there is good action (tripping and tangling). All in all, his final sentence rated higher on the grading scale.

What kind of grade do the sentences in your manuscript rate? An interesting thought, eh?