Well, now you might be running into syntax issues instead of PEMDAS issues depending on what they're confused about. If it's 12 over 2*6, it's 1. If it's 12 ÷ 2 x 6, it's 36.

A lot of people try a bunch of funky stuff to represent fractions in text form (like mixing spaces and no spaces) when they should just be treating it like a programmer has to, and use parenthesis if it's a complex fraction in basic text form.