Since a language is a form of social behaviour, it reflects the ways and behaviour and thougrht of the peaple who speak it as their mother tongue. This means, on the other hand, problems in learning and teaching a foregin language must be solved through comparative studies of the foreign language that the learner is trying to master and his mother-tongue. After such efforts, we can distinguish the problems that are unique to the learner who has been brought up in a certain language communitv, and the result is that we shall be able to direct him to a more effective learning of a foreign language.
In this light,this short study is devoted mainly to some of the probable difficulties of the Japanese learners of English which might occur in connection with the English response patterns. Taken as a whole together with the questions that elicited the answers, the English response patterns present to the Japanese no difficulties to be mentioned, when the questions are in the affirmative ; while they do offer rather confusing problems, when the questions are in the negative. Especially difficult for the Japanese learners of English is concerned with the affirmative negative decision. Such a difficulty lies in the fact that while in English the decision is made according to the basis of the status of fact,in Japanese, the relationship between the fact and the forms of the preceding question is the deciding factor. Accordingly, in Japanese, whatever the fact is, the decision of the affirmative or the negative is made on the basis of whether the speaker agree to the staternent in the preceding question or not.
Although the difficulties in these cases will be cleared away through a systematic production drills with these patterns, since in most cases receptive difficulties will die away after a certain pattern or a vocabulary item, etc. is productively mastered, a more fundametal matter is the conceptions of the functicn words yes and no. If the Japanese equivalents "hai" and "iie" are given in a hastv connection, no confusion may be cleared away from the mind of the Japanese learner of the English response patterns. On the other hand, it would help him to solve problem, if he grasps the conceptions of "yes" and "no" as follows: "no"as "it is 'not',""it is 'no one'," "it is 'nothing',"While "yes" as ~it isn't 'not'," "it isn't'no one',""it isn't 'never', and "it isn't 'nothing'. After all, a language, from the complicated structure down to each vocabulary item,ought to be learned in connection with the situation in which it is used. This is the essential factor to the solution of such difficulties those treated in this paper.