A number of studies were reported which strongly suggested" that systematic development could be found in a number of syntactic domains, and several early studies showed the acquisition of negative structures in English L2 occurred in well defined stages. This paper explores if the students' errors in negation come from the general acquisition sequences of negatives that we can see both in L1 and L2 learners in the previous researches or whether they are influenced by the order of appearance of negatives in their textbook. Giving the subjects (JH1: 107, JH2: 122, JH3: 114) sentence-filling tasks eliciting various kinds of negative morphemes, accuracy rates of two pools of problems, Anaphoric "No" Answers Formation Problems and Negative Form Formation Problems, are compared. Analyzing the data, the following facts were found: 1) Generally; accuracy rates improved as the grade goes up except for some of those that are affected by the frequency of the appearance in the textbook or overgeneralization of the morpheme that the students currently learn. 2) Any conspicuous sign of a general acquisition of negation that L2 learners of English show in the previous research was not found. 3) Japanese novice L2 learners of English do not seem to be affected by the negative forms of copulas which allow negatives after copulas. Bather, they seem to be influenced by the negative formation of auxiliary 'have/ has.' 4) The frequency of the morpheme gives tremendous influence on their acquisition of it. We have to supplement these morphemes that the textbook do not use so often in our oral communication or by the use of eide reader.
