http://www.docstoc.com/docs/55740664/Phonics-Decoding-Strategies

Chapter 2. Phonics and Decoding

The second thread of reading instruction involves phonics and decoding. Phonics is the ability to identify that there is a relationship between the individual sounds (phonemes) of the spoken language and the letters (graphemes) of the written language. Decoding is being able to use visual, syntactic, or semantic cues to make meaning from words and sentences. Visual cues are how the word looks, the letters themselves, and the letter combinations or groupings and their associated sounds. Syntactic cues are how the sentences are structured and how the words are ordered. Semantic cues are how the word fits into the context of the sentence as in the part of speech, the association with pictures, or the meaning cues in the sentence

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/103316/chapters/Phonics-and-Decoding.aspx