Understanding Students’ Misconceptions about Chemical Formula Writing and Naming Ionic Compounds

Abstract

Difficulties in the competency of chemical formula writing and naming ionic compounds are common to General Chemistry 1 learners. Hence, this study is formulated to understand 34 General Chemistry 1 learners' misconceptions about chemical formula writing and naming ionic compounds. This descriptive case study research used a two-tier test and interview questionnaire as the main data-gathering instruments. From the conducted study, analysis shows that in terms of chemical formula writing, the learners misrepresent ionic compounds as charged species, show a lack of understanding of valency and the use of the cross-charge method, and mispresent radicals. In naming ionic compounds, the learners generally misname some of the elements found in binary ionic compounds and misname metal ions with more than 1 charge and polyatomic ions. These misconceptions were validated by the difficulties experienced by the learners in answering the two-tier test, as mentioned in their interviews. Despite the misconceptions and difficulties of the learners in chemical formula writing and naming ionic compounds, they mentioned several ways of addressing them.