Ace the Certify Teacher EC-3 292 Test 2026 – Empower Your Teaching Journey!

In early literacy, decoding means translating print into spoken sounds, while encoding means turning spoken sounds into written letters. Decoding is what you do when you read a word: you see the letters, map them to sounds, and blend them to say the word. Encoding is what you do when you spell a word: you hear the sounds and choose letters to represent each sound.

That directional distinction is exactly captured by saying decoding translates print to sounds and encoding represents sounds with letters. For example, decoding the word cat gives the sounds /k/ /æ/ /t/. Encoding the same word would produce the letters c-a-t.

The other statements mix up the directions or equate the processes, which isn’t accurate.