Related stories

Rocky Route to Business Success The First Step for New Business Superb New Business Club ‘Crownes’ Plaza’s Success District Head: Come to Xuanwu for Business, Culture Call for Toilets in Business Venues to Open to Public

Initial Success for English Course

Many people are familiar with TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and GRE (Graduate Record Examination), but now a new bunch of initials, IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is more and more on people's lips, according to Beijing Youth Daily.

IELTS is said to be quite different from other, longer-established English tests. It is used to test the English level of people who plan to emigrate to nations in the British Commonwealth. One specialty of the test is a probe of examinees' oral English ability in dealing with practical problems in their daily lives.

About 20 percent of those who take the course just wish to improve their English, rather than thinking about emigrating. Sun Feifei, a participant in the IELTS course, signed on because her work requires a high level of oral English. The course, she says, provided exactly what she needed.