Read a Timeline

Every family has a history. A timeline can show events in a family's history. A timeline is an ordered group of words and dates that shows when events happened. 

Learn the skill   

Step1 The title tells what the timeline is about. The timeline has a line divided in equal parts. Each park stands for 10 years.

Step2  Look at the first and last numbers on the timeline. The numbers are years. The events on the timeline happened between these years.

What were they doing?

    Hello, I'm Lin Tao. This is my school. It's a big and beautiful school. There is a big play ground. The gym is next to the playground. In front of the gym, there are science labs. Behind the gym, there is a library. So we can see the gym is between the science labs and the library. In the library, there are many books. Look! This is our teaching building, and there are 48 classrooms in it. In my class, there are 56 students.34 of them are boys, the rest are girls. On the right of the teaching building, there is a dining hall, and we often have lunch there. Teachers' offices are in front of our teaching building.

    Typing(打字) is one of the most important and basic work skills of the 21st century. Because mobile phones are now so popular, there is a new kind of typing-thumbing. Thumbing means people use one or more thumbs(拇指) to touch the keys.

    Most people can type between 20 and 35 words a minute. Some typists, however, can work very quickly, at more than 110 words a minute. And people's left hand usually does 56 percent of the typing.

    The most common international English keyboard is QWERTY. People name it after the first letters on the top left side of the keyboard. It is more than 140 years old. Other keyboards include QWERTZ (in Central Europe) and AZERTY (used by most French speakers in Europe). Countries with non-Roman alphabets(字母系统), such as, Arabia, Russia or Japan, have their own keyboards.

    People practise the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" to make their typing better. That's because it uses every letter of the English alphabet.

    Thumbing and typing can hurt you. RSI (repetitive strain injury) is the name of a medical condition you get if you type too much. However, most people do not understand what RSI is or how serious it can be. Anyone who uses a computer a lot is at risk and should know about RSI.

Streaming sites show more documentaries

Streaming sites (流媒体网站) have become the main platform, for producing and broadcasting (播送) documentaries in China, attracting an increasing number of young viewers, according to a recent report.

On Bilibili, for example, a total of over 3,500 documentaries are available ( 可 以获得的) to stream, while nearly 100 of these are original productions (原创的) according to Zhang Shengyan, general manager of the site's copyright cooperation center.

"Watching documentaries has become an important way for young people to understand and research the world," says Zhang, noting a rush in documentary viewers on the site, from 30 million in late 2018 to 90 million this year.

Tencent Video also notes that 75 percent of its users are members of Generation Z (Z 一代:出生于 1996-2012), and the platform is matching their needs busily providing documentaries with greater experience, says Zhou Mo, with the platform's documentary IP content operation center.

Online platforms produce original documentaries and secure (保护) copyright works to offer such films to attract young viewers, according to the report.

"We will go on to support creation in the production and spreading of documentaries, and encourage more creative production forms to attract more viewers, especially the youth," says Gao Jianmin, director of the National Radio and Television Administration.