This study was aimed at finding out: (1) the types of grammatical errors, and (2) the causes of the grammatical errors in the narrative writing of the first grade students of Senior High School 6 Yogyakarta. udThe study was a case study. The participants were 30 students of the first grade students of State Senior High School 6 Yogyakarta in the academic year of 2011/2012. The study comprised five steps; namely collection of data, identification of errors, quantification of errors, description of errors, and explanation of errors. The research instrument was in the form of a writing assignment. The data were obtained from the students’ writing. udThe results of the study are as follows. First, 14 types of the grammatical errors of the students’ narrative writing are found concerning verb tenses, finite verbs, non-finite verbs, pronouns, prepositions, spelling, agreement of singular and plural nouns, punctuation, contexts of usage, contexts of meaning, redundancy, word choices, word orders, and unintelligibility. Second, the verb tense errors occupy the first rank (24.47%), followed by the pronoun errors (11.56%), and the finite verb errors (10.51%). Third, five types of the causes of errors are: (1) interference in copulative verbs, word orders, verb tenses, and article usages; (2) ignorance of rule restrictions in articles, relative clauses, causative verbs, and verb + gerund constructions; (3) incomplete application of rules in prepositions, verb phrases, subjects of sentenceS, and objects of sentenceS; (4) false concepts hypothesized in past verb tenses, non-finite verbs, agreement of the singular and plural nouns, and adverbs of degree; and (5) over-generalization in irregular past verbs, articles, verb phrases, and plural nouns.
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