Given the professed orientation toward proficiency development in the foreign language teaching profession, the inclination of textbook authors and publishers to offer communicative activities should be quite strong. This study analyzed the learning activities of six popular first-year college German textbooks and found that half the texts provide more communicative activities than non-communicative ones. The data and analysis given here will be helpful to foreign language departments and instructors in making decisions about what first-year German textbook to adopt.