November 20th, 2009
Decoding is a word used in some major early literacy literature, but I don’t find any clear definition of what it is.
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4 Comments
I, personally, tend to group that together. However, in the resource book titled “Jump into Literacy” by Rae Pica she simply states that decoding is “understanding that letters represent something” (layman’s definition, I guess). :-) So understanding that the letters each have a name and a sound and that we put those sounds/letters together to make a word. I’d love to hear from you if you come across a spectactular definition because I too agree it’s not really clear in many of our early literacy resources. :-)
I know at the first grade level, we use the term decoding to describe the relationship between the written letter and spoken sound. I think that when most people refer to decoding, it means printed words. But, really it could mean either. The definition of decoding on dictionary.com says “to extract meaning from (spoken or written symbols)” So really it could be either one.
Decoding is the ability to apply your knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words. Understanding these relationships gives children the ability to recognize familiar words quickly and to figure out words they haven’t seen before. Although children may sometimes figure out some of these relationships on their own, most children benefit from explicit instruction in this area. Phonics is one approach to reading instruction that teaches students the principles of letter-sound relationships, how to sound out words, and exceptions to the principles
Decoding almost always refers to printed words. In very simple terms, it is matching print to sound. Decoding means taking the letters in a printed word and making the appropriate sounds in order to generate the correct spoken word.
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