A study of the importance of matching students' cognitive style with the teaching style of instructors was undertaken in five high school second-year French classes. Common instructional objectives and materials were used by the classes, in different schools. All students and teachers were given the Group Embedded Figures Test to determine field dependence or independence as a measure of cognitive style, and student-teacher matches and mismatches were noted. Teachers' grade expectations of their students were compared with students' rankings on standardized French tests and analyzed statistically. Results showed that field-independent teachers tend to estimate pupil competence more accurately than field-dependent teachers. It is suggested that the mismatch of student and teacher cognitive styles may create serious learning problems in the French classroom because of the nature of the learning tasks involved. (MSE)