A foreign language test system was introduced in Shanghai yesterday to help people seeking employment with international companies demonstrate their proficiency.

The Oral Proficient Interview computer system (OPIc), developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), currently covers 13 languages and five of them, English, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish, are now available in China.

"The system was introduced to China because it contains evaluation tests for multiple languages, rather than a single language like other tests," said Li Peize, president of the Beijing-based Chinese Testing International of the Confucius Institute. "It was designed by more than 10,000 language experts around the world."