Abstract: In order to assess the effectiveness and identify the problems of secondary education, position the curriculum designed for undergraduates as well as provide rationality for the undergoing teaching reform, the School of English and International Studies of Beijing Foreign Studies University conducted a comprehensive survey on the English majors of 2008 entry. The research on the writing competence of the freshmen suggests that students from foreign language schools outperform those not from foreign language schools in the writing test and that the difference in writing scores has achieved statistical importance. So first-year and second-year writing classes should focus on helping students with their range of vocabulary and sentence variety, cohesion and coherence, as well as critical thinking skills.