My family move to a new flat. I have some new neighbours now. I think they are all good.

    A frog was swimming in a pond after a rainstorm. He saw a brilliant rainbow across the sky. He was so excited that he couldn't help crying.

    "I have heard there is a cave filled with gold at the place where the rainbow ends. I will find the cave and be the richest frog in the world," said the frog.

    The frog swam to the edge of the pond as fast as he could. There he met another frog by accident.

    "Where are you rushing to?" asked the second frog.

    "I am rushing to the place where the rainbow ends," said the first frog.

    "There is a saying that there is a cave filled with gold and diamonds at that place," said the second frog.

    "Then come with me." said the first frog. "We will be the two richest frogs in the world."

    The two frogs jumped out of the pond and ran through the grassland. There they met another frog.

    "What's the hurry?" asked the third frog.

    "We are running to the place where the rainbow ends," said the two frogs.

    "I have been told there is a cave filled with gold, diamonds and pearls at that place," said the third frog.

    "Then come with us," said the two frogs. "We will be the three richest frogs in the world."

    The three frogs ran for miles. Finally they came to the end of the rainbow.

    There they saw a dark cave on the side of a hill.

    "Gold! Diamonds! Pearls!" cried the frogs. As they jumped into the cave, they found a snake lived inside.

    He was hungry and had been thinking about his dinner. He swallowed the three frogs quickly.

    Everyone has his own birthday. People in different countries celebrate their birthdays in different ways. Now here are four people from different countries. They will tell us how they celebrate their birthdays in their countries.

    Sandy comes from Madrid(马德里). She says happily," My 21st birthday is on Saturday, and I'm going to go out with some friends. To wish me a happy birthday, they are going to pull on my ear 21 times, once for each year. It's an old custom. Some people pull on the ear just once, but my friends are very traditional."

    Mr. and Mrs. Sato are from Tokyo. Mr. Sato is going to be 60 tomorrow. In Japan, the sixtieth birthday is called Kanreki(花甲)—it's the beginning of a new life. The color red is for a new life, so we always give something red for a sixtieth birthday.

    Liu Mei from Beijing feels very excited and tells us, "Tomorrow is my 16th birthday. It's a special birthday, so we're going to have a family party. Maybe I will get some lucky money from my relatives(亲戚). My mother is going to cook noodles for a long life.

    Phillip, from Paris, smiles to us," I'm going to be thirty next week, so I'm going to invite three very good friends out for dinner. In France, when you have a birthday, you often invite people out."

    How do you usually celebrate your birthday?

    A rabbit is running into its hole. You may ask, "What happened?"

    Well, when a rabbit sees something dangerous, it runs away. Its tail moves up and down as it runs. When other rabbits see this tail moving up and down, they run too. They know that there is a danger. The rabbit has told them something without making a sound. It has given them a signal.

    Many other animals use this kind of language too. When a bee found some food, it goes back to its home. It cannot tell the other bees where the food is by speaking to them, but it does a little dance in the air. This tells the other bees to go with it to find food.

    Some animals say things by making sounds. A dog barks, for example, when a stranger comes near. A cat purrs (发出呼噜呼噜的声音) when it is pleased. Some birds make several different sounds, each with its own meaning.

    But human beings have something that no animals have—a large number of words about things, actions, feelings or ideas. We are able to give each other information and to tell or inform other people what is in our mind or how we feel. By writing words down we can remind ourselves of the things that have happened, or send messages to people far away. No animal can do this. No animal has the wonderful power of language.

    No one knows how man learned to make words. As centuries went by, he made more and more new words. This is what we mean by language.

    People living in different countries made different kinds of words. Today there are about fifteen hundred different languages in the world. A very large English dictionary, for example, contains four or five hundred thousand words. But we do not know all of them. The words we know are called vocabulary. We should try to make our vocabulary larger. Read as many books as possible. When we meet a new word, look it up in the dictionary. A dictionary is the most useful book.