What does it mean when language arts teachers refer to "decoding" in relation to literacy?

Question

What does it mean when language arts teachers refer to "decoding" in relation to literacy?

Answer 1

You have been given good answers.  And the person who said decoding is not all there is to reading is absolutely correct.  

Decoding is important, but teaching only decoding without spending time on comprehension is not good.

Check out the Four Blocks program, especially the block called Working with Words.  It gives you so much more understanding of how to teach phonics, decoding etc.  The activities are not only engaging and fun; they teach decoding better than any method I know.

Answer 2

It means that the student has learned that there is a relationship between a symbol and a sound. They know that a letter is a symbol that makes a sound. They start putting these sounds together or "decoding" but this does not mean they have reading comprehension. They have just learned to decode.

Answer 3

The alphabet and combinations of letters are a code that tell you what sounds are in the words.  You "decode" when you know that the symbols c a t stand for the sounds /c/ /a/ /t/, and put them together to make the word cat.

We just don't think of it as a code any more, because we are so used to it!

Answer 4

J.S. is correct. Decoding basically means being able to sound out letters and understanding certain phonics rules to decipher the word.