Arab student writers sometimes have difficulty in adjusting from reading from left to right - right to left and this difficulty translates to righting writing in English - and spelling.
It took me awhile to figure out what ‘dogs’ have to do with frankincense - understand the tricky reader/writer relationship?
Thank you for such a good comment M. I liked having your reading of the text "off to dogs ..... " as I hadn't focused too much on this particular difficulty. I had interpreted meaning here reasonably well since I was familiar with the source texts and knew this writer had to explain 'offering to .... ' but it did take me a while to figure the dogs were the gods - and then I had a laugh. (It's always better to laugh than groan).
Also, it is always worthwhile finding out what a student writer wants to say before crushing them with harsh feedback - something I try really hard to avoid. I understand that writing can be such a frustrating process so that negativity in feedback is really something students just don't need.
I just want my students to, one day, experience writing as a playing with words (as you clearly know how to do).
i had to look it up in your tags; couldn't figure out what these dogs are "offed" with when using incent resins... i'm fascinated by such cultural differences (and your way of explaining & possibly deadling with them appeals to me; i find it so much more important to understand what causes misunderstanding than correcting it. thanks for sharing this truly thoughtful example. :-)
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haha, you clearly live in the wrong environment if you have a hard time to associate "dogs" with "gods"! ;-)
but yes you are right - writing can be (or always is partly) a frustrating process.it's on the other hand also massively fun, especially when you allow yourself such associations, where they make sense, even if it is only nonsense. you do good as a teacher when you allow your students EVERYTHING. just scold them for not taking their right serious! ;-)