3. 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 danger. The rabbit has told them something without making a sound. It has given them a signal（信号）.
Many other animals use this kind of language. When a bee has 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 bees where the food is.
Some animals say things by making sounds. A dog barks, for instance, when a stranger comes near. A cat purrs （咕噜咕噜） when pleased. Some birds make several different sounds, each with its own meaning.
But human beings have something that no animal has ---a large number of words which have the meanings of things, actions, feelings or ideas. We are able to give each other information, to tell or inform other people what is in our mind or how we feel. By writing words down we can remind （提醒）ourselves of the things that have happened, or send messages to people far away. No animals can do this. No animals have the wonderful power of language.
No one knows how man learned to make words. Somehow he learned to make them. 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,
containsfour or five hundred thousand words. But we don not know all these. 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.
【小题1】A rabbit moves its tail up and down in order to __________.
| A．tell other rabbits where the food is |
| B．warn other rabbit of danger |
| C．make itself look strong |
| D．help itself to run fast |
【小题2】A dog can tell something by _________.
| A．singing | B．dancing | C．jumping | D．barking |
【小题3】Only human beings are able to ______.
| A．give others information |
| B．tell others how they feel |
| C．express their feelings with words |
| D．make different sounds, each with its own meaning |
【小题4】The underlined word “contain” in Paragraph 6 probably means ______.
| A．covers | B．checks | C．changes | D．catches |
【小题5】According to the passage, how can we make our vocabulary larger?
| A．By talking much to others |
| B．By learning more languages |
| C．By looking up any word in a dictionary |
| D．By doing as much reading as possible |