This happens a lot when I try to explain the commutative property, mostly in elementary grade levels. I say
2 + 3 = ?
and then the student usually replies with 5. Albeit they're not wrong, it's not the idea of commutative property. I feel that students so conditioned early on to see that 2 + 3 is necessarily 5 as opposed to understanding that 2 + 3 can just be that: 2 + 3. I had this problem myself growing up.
How can I address this issue?
2 + 3 = 3 + 2
more examples,
I was explaining cross-cancellation and this is the visualization
$\frac{2}{7} \cdot \frac{7}{3} = \frac{2 \cdot7}{7 \cdot 3} = \frac{2 \cdot \require{cancel} \cancel{7}}{\require{cancel} \cancel{7} \cdot3}$
instead, they visualize the following
$\frac{2}{7} \cdot \frac{7}{3} = \frac{14}{21}$ {we are stuck here since we cannot see the cancellation working out}
so what I mean is that students cannot comprehend that it isn't necessary to always work out the arithmetic right away but can keep them as expressions to observe patterns. I hope this is a bit more clear.
Addition of a story: A famous example, the story of Gauss. Once upon a time, there was a teacher who was bored and asked the class, included Gauss, who asked students to sum up from 1 to 100. While the rest of the class struggled to solve it, Gauss got it with ease. This is the idea I was trying to convey.
Instead of sitting down and computing hard, compute smarter kind of idea.
$ \sum_{i=0}^n i = \dfrac{n\times(n+1)}2$
$ \sum_{i=0}^{100} i = \dfrac{100 \cdot 101}2$