R. Sage (Ed.), Paradoxes in Education, 113–145. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. ROSEMARY SAGE 7. INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION ABSTRACT The chapter has 3 sections: Defining Cross-cultural Communication; Communication Difficulties, concluding with Culture & Language Styles. The aim is to develop a broad awareness of the many factors involved in teaching with an intercultural perspective. The text is interspersed with activities which can be used by both teachers and students to help ease relationships and learning in the classroom. These tasks have been successfully adapted for a variety of age levels and employed across subject areas as appropriate. They were devised for a European Union (EU) project (INTERMAR, 2011–2014) to improve communication across different ethnic, language and cultural groups. The evaluation suggested that such input should be part of all student experience. INTRODUCTION: BACKGROUND CONTEXT There is a school in Mid-England where 234 different languages are spoken and the one for instruction is not that of most students at home. Observing students in recreation, you see them generally grouped into ethnic cultures and speaking their mother-tongue. The verbal and non-verbal messages are different. For example, the Spanish are animated in exchanges with explicit facial expressions and strong gestures; the Arabs are quieter with girls hidden by traditional dress so that body movements are not noticeable. This is the visible cultural communication process but there is much that is invisible, referring to underlying beliefs and assumptions, which we are not even aware of and so never consciously and intellectually examine. Generally communication is not taught, although addressed in Finland, Japan and Cuba, with a comprehensive knowledge of communication verbal and non-verbal processes, delivered in teacher- training, emphasised in their philosophy and implemented in classrooms. CULTURES VALUING COMMUNICATION In Cuba, there are Heads of Pedagogical Institutes with a degree in Speech Pathology, a Masters in Psychology and a PhD in Pedagogy. Teaching is a communicative process and so necessary to understand how it breaks down or does not develop normally. The Cuban system produces some of the most successful education results