Abstract Temporal adverbial clause is an important language structure and exhibits different features in English and Chinese, which brings about difficulties for Chinese EFL learners. Based on the theory of Dependency Grammar, the study attempts to investigate the ordering distribution of temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners at the beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. The results show that: 1) Chinese EFL learners at different proficiencies tend to precede temporal adverbial clause to main clause. With the increase of proficiency, the postposition of temporal adverbial clauses by learners increases and is approaching to the ordering preference of target language. 2) The ordering distribution of subordinators for temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners is consistent with native English, showing a tendency of 100% preposition, which ascribes to the high frequency and salience of subordinators in English. 3) MDD is one of the significant motivations that cause the preference of prepositional temporal adverbial clauses by Chinese EFL learners. As a kind of natural language, interlanguage has a unique cognitive mechanism which distinguishes from both native and target language. This study provides a more comprehensive theoretical reference for learners at different proficiencies to understand and learn temporal adverbial clauses, as well as data support from empirical research for language teaching.