Abstract：Based on a self-built corpus of Chinese EFL learners’ English writings, this study explores the ordering distribution in English temporal adverbial clauses (TACs) and the influencing fac¬tors in different stages of L2 learning by using the binary logistic regression. It is found that (1) Chinese students' English TACs show a clear prepositive tendency. With the improvement of L2 proficiency, the prepositive tendency is significantly reduced; (2) In the initial stage of L2 learn¬ing, the syntactic complexity and spatial sequence iconicity are the main factors affecting the or¬dering distribution of Chinese students' English TACs; (3) For middle - and high-level learners, the temporal sequence iconicity, spatial sequence iconicity and syntactic complexity have a combined influence on the ordering distribution of TACs. Moreover, with the improvement of L2 pro¬ficiency, the influencing strength of syntactic complexity surpasses that of temporal sequence iconicity. This study has, to a certain extent, revealed the cognitive law of second language learn¬ing.
