A study of the effects of recent changes in the United Kingdom's school-exit tests in French language skills, primarily in the new emphasis on communicative competence, compared the perceptions of students in four classes preparing for the traditional test and four classes preparing for the new test. These groups were administered questionnaires asking about the helpfulness of a variety of typical classroom activities and how much time they perceived themselves spending on each activity. The classroom activities included listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities, and student-teacher and student-student interactions. It was found that, in general, students in the traditional-test group did more reading and writing, and students in the new-test group focused more on listening and speaking activities in class. The results suggest that teachers may be using the test format as the instructional method, a mistake made in language teaching in the past. Appended is a list of learning objectives related to listening, conversation, pronunciation, reading, writing, and ways of working.