The study investigated student perceived usefulness to the instructed writing strategies, and the student writing difficulties. Twenty-two college English major freshmen enrolled in English Composition (I) at a private university in northern Taiwan participated in the study. Data were collected through six sources: (1) questionnaire of students’ background in English learning and writing, (2) classroom observation, (3) correction notes, (4) journal entries, (5) interviews, and (6) pre-and post-writing strategy questionnaire. The result displays that, first, vocabulary size is responsible for the students’ major writing difficulty. Second, students perceived planning in mind without making notes to be the most useful writing strategy, and at the same time, they also used the same strategy with the most frequency. Third, except for four students, other students seldom used writing strategies that were not provided in class. It is found that the reported strategies were actually taught by the instructor, and students did not use other strategies that were not taught by the instructor to their writing.