Here’s the common syntax I use in archiving and extracting files or folders.
tar -xvf foo.tar
verbosely extract foo.tar
tar -xzf foo.tar.gz
extract gzipped foo.tar.gz
tar -cjf foo.tar.bz2 bar/
create bzipped tar archive of the directory bar called foo.tar.bz2
tar -xjf foo.tar.bz2 -C bar/
extract bzipped foo.tar.bz2 after changing directory to bar
tar -xzf foo.tar.gz blah.txt
extract the file blah.txt from foo.tar.gz