NARRATOR: Today we're going to talk about the communication cycle, specifically the eight different components that make it up. Sure, you may not have heard of the communication cycle before, but some of these components are going to seem pretty familiar. To begin, we always start with a sender, who has some kind of idea that he is trying to get to a receiver. 

So that begs the question-- how does an idea get from the sender to the receiver? Well, that idea represents the third component in the communication cycle, and that is the message, the idea being communicated. And for our sender here, well, he has a very specific idea in mind. He is in love, and he can't wait to communicate it. 

So now we arrive at our fourth component, which is the encoding phase. To encode is simply to package the message. And you really only have three different options. They are either verbal, non-verbal, or both. Our sender has decided that a love letter would be the best way to encode his message. 

This brings us to our fifth component. And that is the channel, which is simply defined as how the receiver takes in the message. Human beings have five channels. Think. What else do you have five of? If you guessed your five senses, you'd be right. Hearing, seeing, and feeling are the primary ways in which human beings take in information. And in this case, if it's a love letter, she will be using sight. 

Having taken in this message, she now needs to make sense of it. And another word for that is our next component, and that is to decode it. So if encoding is packaging your message, decoding is making sense of it. So she's unpackaged the message. Now all we do is wait for her response. What do you think? Will she be into him? 

OK. It looks like she is. And that response that she's giving right there, that's our next component. And that is the feedback loop-- any response the receiver gives to the sender. 

So there you have it, one effective cycle of communication. But wait. We're forgetting our final element. And that is noise, which is simply defined as anything complicating a message being sent or received. So if our sender has bad handwriting, our receiver can no longer decode his message. This, of course, alters her response, and therein changes the feedback. So in the end, it seems miscommunication is just as much a part of this cycle. Thanks for watching.