Meru Badyal | January 5, 2012
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Here’s number 1 reason to learn French

French Learning | France in Flag Colors

Visiting France.

Visited by around 80 million foreign tourists in 2010, France is the most popular tourist destination in the world.

France isn’t popular because of Wines and Cheeses alone. It also offers one of the finest coastlines, mountain ranges, chateaux and adventure sports. France combines history, art and culture. There is never a dull moment when in France.  

7 of the most visited tourist attractions in France are:

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower or La Tour Eiffel, the symbol of the capital city of Paris is one of the most visited paid monuments in the world. Originally built as an entrance for a fair in 1889, more than 2 billion people from across the world have visited this monument since then. If you are visiting France, Eiffel tower would be most likely number 1 on your list of places to visit.

Disney Land is not just for kids but for everyone. With 15 million visitors, this holiday and recreation resort is France's and Europe's most visited tourist site. Rides, disney characters, games and eating options are just some of the attractions here. Being near to Paris (just 20 miles away) makes Disney Land a quick and fun filled getaway when visiting the French capital.

For adventure lovers, Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, the 'more than just ski" resort in French Alps and the site of the very first Winter Olympics in 1924, is extremely popular. Located at a height of 4,810 meters, it is the third most visited natural site in the world. Mark Twight rightly described the town as "the death-sport capital of the world". It is extremely popular for ice climbing, extreme skiing, rafting and canyoning.

A journey to France is incomplete without visiting the châteax: Palace of Versailles. The Palace of Versailles is just another tourist spot just about 12 miles from Paris. The lush, vast and luxurious palace played a central role in the French revolution. If you are in interested in châteax, you may also want to check out Châteax de Chambord (the beast's castle in Beauty and the Beast was based on this easily recognizable Châteax). 

Lourve Paris Museum Pic French Learning

Musee du Louvre or The Louvre is the world’s largest and most visited museums in the world. It is a central landmark of Paris, it is located on the bank of River Seine. Such exotic and brilliant artifacts like the original Mona Lisa painting, The Seated Scribe and a painting of Saint Blaise in French stained glass panel are housed in this museum. If that doesn't interest you, the stunning architecture of the museum itself will.  

Lourve Paris Museum Pic French Learning

Located on River Seine, Notre Dame Cathedral or Our Lady of Paris is considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture in France and Europe. As early as 1333, Jean de Jandun recognized the cathedral as one of Paris's three most important buildings in his "Treatise on the Praises of Paris." Cathedral's dramatic towers, spire, stained glass and statuary still impress visitors from around the world.  

Gorges in France French Learning

Gorge du Verdon is a 15 miles long canyon and rises 2,300 feet from the Verdon river below. River Verdon is named after its beautiful turquoise green emerald color and is popular for water sports like rafting, kayaking, sailing and water skiing. Its also close to French Riviera. Hence, tourists throng the river for boating as well as rock climbing on the limestone walls.

Whether it is a romantic destination or an adventure one, luxury holiday or a family getaway, France is the number 1 choice for travelers around the world.

P.S. To really enjoy your French visit, you must learn at least some French. Fortunately you can do so without adding the hassle of traffic or high costs to your life. Select and enroll in a course of your choice from our "selected" French courses and enjoy your French visit:

Category: French Language Blog | Tags: , ,
Vidushi Kanwar | December 30, 2011
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How to prepare for reading comprehension : Terasee Morris talks about improving reading skills

In an informal conversation with WizIQ team, Terasee Morris, one of the most beloved online teachers for English on WiziQ shares  useful tips for improving your reading comprehension skills.

Terasee Morris lives in Uvalde, United States and has been teaching English for almost 20 years, helping students across the world with English reading skills. She also helps students with English speaking and listening. In this conversation, Terasee cuts beyond marketing buzzwords and gives practical, usable and self employable tips to improve your reading skills. You hear Terasee talk about the impact of technology and short attention spans on reading skills. You also hear her talk about common mistakes we all make while trying to improve our reading skills. She also answers questions about reading skills for standardized exams like GRE, GMAT, SAT and ACT.

These 10 minutes will be a great investment of your time if you are looking to improve your reading skills.

If you have questions for her, let us know. We’d include that in our next interview with Terasee.

Category: GRE Blog | Tags: , , , , , ,
Vidushi Kanwar | December 23, 2011
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Use this Christmas gift, all your life!

Take that all important first step towards realizing your learning goals. This festive season, enroll in these “Editorial Selection” courses on WizIQ at a fabulous 75% discount. Use promo code, XMAS123 during check out (after clicking on Enroll Now) for any of the courses mentioned below.

Comprehensive GMAT Preparation

Work harder than other test takers at identifying your weak points and improving on them.

Normally : $300

Seasons offer: $75

Enroll Now

Learn How to Play Guitar

Learn on your own pace to become a rockstar guitar player, sing ballads to your beloved

or make the ultimate rebel statement!

Normally : $100

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C Language Course

Designed for beginners, 30 hours of LIVE Instruction, one of the most popular teachers of IT courses, starts December 20.

Normally : $199

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Learn Spanish Online : Beginners Level Course

Lifetime access to 15 recorded audio-video lessons to learn one of the top 5 languages in the world, on your own pace!

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90 Hours Crash Course for IIT-JEE/ AIEEE

Don’t leave things to chance. Give your preparation that final push! Course conducted by APT Academy, among the first IIT-JEE/ AIEEE online coaching programs.

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Simple Facebook Insights

Amazon published author teaches you how-to translate Facebook interactions into meaningful business results in this course for business owners, social media managers, marketing professionals and managers

Normally : $200

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Category: WizIQ Courses | Tags: , , , ,
Vidushi Kanwar | December 21, 2011
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What I wish I knew about preparing for the CAT

What I wish I knew about preparing for the CAT

I received my bachelors’ degree in 2007 and chose to work, rather than continue my studies. This choice took me away from the usual path for middle class students in India. Most wouldn’t think of working until they acquired at least one masters’ degree. However, being a rebel, I liked the freedom of earning my own money at 20. It made me feel independent and satisfied.

That, however, didn’t last long. I quickly saw that people with only a bachelors didn’t get very far in their careers. To achieve my ambitions, I decided to pursue my masters after all, but in what? I could follow the course laid out by my English Honors studies, or build on my marketing background. Having been in a competitive working environment, I realized that an MBA was a third and ultimately better choice. Given how badly managers communicated, this seemed an area where I could stand out.

With that decision made, I had to now prepare for the Common Admission Test (CAT). This exam is used by top business schools in India, like IIM Ahemdabad, for admissions. Only 1 in 100 people make it to these schools.

The CAT is a tough test, with students preparing for years to be tested on topics such as quantitative ability, data interpretation, verbal ability and logical reasoning. Most look at their CAT preparation days as a mix of anxiety and hard work. My CAT preparation story is a bit different, though. As much as I wanted to do an MBA, I’d hoped to avoid the CAT, so by the time I made my decision I had only 6 months to prepare. Since many prepare for years, this situation was not ideal.

I also had the disadvantage of not having studied math, which is a vital aspect of both quantitative ability and data interpretation. However, I was confident that I would do well in English, so I could focus my preparation on the math side of the equation.

Six months flew by in a jiffy. What looked like a decent time for preparation, was too short in the end. I didn’t score well on the CAT, and in hindsight three years later, I discovered things about CAT preparation I wish I knew earlier. These lessons apply when preparing for any large-scale, difficult exam.

The short version is that “It’s all about your mind.” However, you’ll find these details a bit more instructive:

  1. It’s all about your attitude! The CAT is difficult. I could imagine that well enough, and I never convinced myself that I could do well. That   negative attitude turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I didn’t believe in myself, who else would?
  2. Its all about your expectations! If you have a destination in mind, you have to embrace the path that gets you there. It’s not possible to enter a top business school without working hard on an exam like the CAT. I wish I’d gotten that straight in my head.
  3. Its all about preparing! Don’t assume that you can skate through an exam like the CAT, and don’t put off studying the toughest topics.  Because of my approach to #1 and #2, I was never properly prepared for the quantitative section in particular.
  4. Its all about avoiding overconfidence! I came from an English background. That made me overestimate my own ability for the CAT’s  English section. If I had taken the time to fully prepare, I would have scored higher on that portion of the test.
  5. Its all about choosing a solid preparation course or method! Because I didn’t want success badly enough, I settled for a CAT preparation institute that wasn’t really at the top of its field. I wish I had been more diligent in my choice of a CAT course.

Of these, I think #5 was the most critical. A good tutor would have motivated, guided and inspired me better. So, if you want my advice, while preparing for the CAT (or the GRE, GMAT, SAT, ACT, AP, IIT, etc), choose your tutor and course carefully. You’re not just choosing your tutor or course, you’re choosing whether you’ll be successful, or you’ll fail.

Certainly I’m not the only one with test preparation stories! I’d love to hear yours. What do you wish you knew before preparing for your most critical exams? How did you find the best tutors and/or courses? How did you recognize which tutors and/or courses to avoid?

Category: WizIQ Courses | Tags: ,
vikramadhiman | December 7, 2011
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Hello world, in 5 programming languages!

Following from our first post, Hello world, I thought, it would be interesting to show how to write the world's favorite first program. Even better, let’s look at how to write it in 5 of the most popular programming languages.

HTML

In terms of sheer output it produces every second, HTML has no competition. Rather than being replaced by newer languages, HTML is actually gaining ground even where it has not been strong – Rich Internet Applications and Mobile Devices.

As the rare consensus among open standards advocates and giants like Apple and Google suggests, HTML 5 (the newest version of HTML) is the language of future. And, its easy to learn too. Anyone who knows how to use MS-Office can learn HTML in one day flat!

To get started, just try this:

<html>

<head>

<title>

My first Hello World program in HTML

</title>

</head>

<body>

<p>Hello World!</p>

</body>

</html>

That's it. HTML is a <tag> based language. Every tag starts and ends, with the opening being the tag by itself, and the end being the tag with a forward slash in front of it. For example:



<h1>Main Heading</h1>




Copy the sample code into a text editor and save the file as helloworld.html, with a plain text (ANSI or ASCII code) format. Then open the file with your favorite browser. Your first HTML code is written successfully!


Related : If you are interested in learning HTML, check out this online course on HTML 5.


P.S. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and still some people won't recognize HTML as a language. But, I do :-) 


 


C Language


The C programming language was developed in the early 1970s, and is still going strong. In fact, Hello World was originally written in “The C Programming Language” book by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the language. Here is how it’s written in C:


#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
printf("hello, world\n");
return 0;
}


For a moment, forget about the details and focus on the line :


printf("hello, world\n");


This is the line that "prints" or "outputs:"


'hello, world'. \n


Including the \n is just like pressing the "Enter" key, in that the cursor advances to the next line. Ultimately C isn’t as easy as HTML, as you need to set up a C compiler (here is a list of C compilers) to run the program. Still, working in C is relatively easy once you have the environment set up.


Related: If you find this fascinating, check out this online course on C language.


 


JAVA


JAVA is to geeks what pen is to an artist. Caffeine! Evoking strong passion!


Still one of the most used programming languages in the world, JAVA has a strong and loyal community of developers. Even so, I don't personally know JAVA, so I was excited to research how to write my first Hello World JAVA program and share it with you.


It was trickier than I imagined. Part of it was because I didn’t have a JDK installed (learn how you can install JDK). Eventually I figured it out, though. Here’s my first JAVA program:


class HelloWorld {
 public static void main(String[] args)
 {
 System.out.println("Hello, World!");
 }
}


To run this, save the code into a file as HelloWorld.java (use the same name as the class name). Be sure you have the JDK, and then compile the program using this command:


javac HelloWorld.java


We’re not done yet, though! Just as with C, compiling the program just creates program itself (a binary file HelloWorld.class). Run this command:


java HelloWorld


And you’ll produce your output:


Hello, World!


As we can see, the equivalent of printf statement of C in Java is system.out.println! Java is obviously a little trickier to start.


Related : WizIQ has plenty of online JAVA courses, from beginner to advanced. Take your pick!


 


PHP


PHP is insanely popular for web development. It powers a few little websites like Facebook and Wikipedia. You might have heard of them.


You might have also heard of WordPress, Joomla, Drupal. All of these are written in PHP. PHP is free to use, can be deployed on almost all server environments and is easy to learn.


I can write some basic PHP myself and think the simplest way to write "Hello, World" in PHP is by embedding PHP in HTML. So, here we go:


<html>
 <head>
  <title>PHP Test</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <?php echo '<p>Hello, World</p>'; ?>
 </body>
</html>


Save this file as HelloWorld.php and upload it to a web server which has support for PHP or install a private web server on your computer. If you don't have PHP installed, check this tutorial on how to install PHP. Then access this file as http://<serverURL>/HelloWorld.php from your browser and see our outcome:


Hello, World


Related : We have a PHP for Beginners Online Course. If you are interested in learning PHP and web development, check it out.


 


.Net


I don't want to leave Microsoft aficionados behind. C# and .NET are used extensively by the WizIQ Engineering Team. I’ve studied .NET but wouldn’t personally call myself an expert.


While developing using .Net, you have a choice of C# and VB.Net. For this example, I'll choose C#.


When writing .NET code it’s helpful to use Microsoft Visual Studio. To get started, open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Console Application Project in Visual C#. Name it (you know what’s coming) HelloWorld!


Once this is done, go to the Solution Explorer and edit Program.Cs for this project, then replace existing code with the following code:


using System;
namespace HelloWorld
{
    class Hello
    {
        static void Main()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
            Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit.");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}


Press F5 to run the project. A command prompt window appears that contains (you guessed it):


Hello World


Related : If all this sounds geeky, go back to HTML and PHP (and according to me, your lives will be lot simpler). If all this sounds fascinating, then check out our .Net, C# and VB.Net Courses!


I hope you found this post interesting! Do share your feedback. What would you like to learn?

					

									

				
				

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						admin |
						November 30, 2011
											

					

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Hello world!

				
				

										
Well, this is the default WordPress blog post. We did not want to remove it. So, we thought we’d build on it :) 


Hello World is the first phrase you output to a screen (computer, laptop or mobile phones) when learning a new programming language. The output of this phrase indicates progress, practical application and excitement, all on day one. No matter what you achieve later, nothing beats the first Hello World program. This, then is our Hello World. In the coming blog posts, we will feature links to tutorials, tests, online classes, courses, e-books and more. We will also feature posts telling you exactly how you should learn a particular subject from teachers expert in those subjects. Overall, this blog will be a fun, relaxed, contemporary and useful. So, stay tuned!


P.S. The “hello, world” program, which has become the model for an introductory program in most programming textbooks, regardless of programming language, was first used by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, when they wrote the first edition of “The C Programming Language”.


 

					

									

				
				

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