Those who had been admitted to the high school from ECNU's middle school had strong backgrounds in Russian-enough to hold a conversation with a native speaker and read Soviet middle-school textbooks. On the other hand, most of the students who had tested into the school from outside had had only one or two years of Russian. Worse, there were still other students who had trouble even identifying the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet.
張思中解釋，從附中初中部升上來的學生，俄語水平很高，可以和俄國人對話、能閱讀蘇聯中學課本；而另一半外校考進來的學生只讀過一、二年俄語；其他零星學生卻連基本字母都還沒弄清楚。