Abstarct: Accurate word order acquisition in English is very problematic to Iraqi undergraduates studying English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and this is mainly because of the structural differences between Arabic and English languages. Although English has a fixed Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) sequence, Arabic has a freer structure, with Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) as one of the options, which frequently results in syntactic transfer and word order errors in academic papers written by the students. The purpose of this research is to explore the interlanguage syntax of the Iraqi undergraduate EFL students with an emphasis on finding out the most frequent word order errors and the degree to which Arabic patterns of syntax affect mistakes. In particular, the study deals with the most common types of errors and their association with the Arabic sentence structures. It used a mixed-methods design, which involved quantification of written texts of students in quantitative analysis and qualitative semi-structured interviews. Thirty intermediate Iraqi undergraduate students were used, with their essays and assignments being analyzed in terms of syntactic errors, and interviewed about their beliefs and approaches to producing English sentences. The results show that misplacing subjects and verbs, using auxiliary verbs inappropriately and the misplacement of the modifiers were the most common mistakes. Such mistakes were highly correlated with negative interference of Arabic structures. This research not only emphasizes the pedagogical significance of increasing the syntactic awareness of learners but also offers curriculum development and specific instructional techniques.