Answering Yes and No Questions Correctly

Teacher: Welcome to daily tips on learning English. Today's tip is on answering yes and no questions correctly.

Teacher: In English, yes is always followed by affirmative statements; no is always followed by negative statements.

Teacher: This means you can't say "yes, I haven't eaten diner yet" or "no, I did my homework." Chinese allows this but English does not. There are different kinds of yes/no questions. Simple yes/no questions such as "do you speak English?" "Are you hungry?" pose no problem. But negative questions such as "don't you speak English?" "aren't you hungry?" require the same answers "yes, I do." "no, I don't." or "yes, I am." "no, I am not."

Teacher: Chinese learners of English are often misled by negative questions and answer "yes, I don't speak English or yes, I am not hungry." by accident.

Teacher: Another type of yes/no question is to use a rising intonation with a statement. For example, you ask a Chinese person "did you eat diner?" and he says, "no I didn't?" You are surprised so you ask, "you didn't eat diner?" and he answers yes instead of no. Don't use yes to means "shi de". You should say that's correct. In the example above, yes means "yes, I ate diner", not correct "I didn't eat diner".

Teacher: Let's look at another example, I think that all Chinese people like to eat rice. So, when my Chinese friend tells me that he never eats rice, I am very surprised. And I ask, "you don't like to eat rice?" and he answers yes. This is wrong. Because in English you can not say "yes, I don't like to eat rice." He should answer no or that's correct.

Teacher: So remember yes must be followed by affirmative statements, and no must be followed by negative statements.

Teacher: This has been today's tip on learning English. Tune in tomorrow for another tip.