Abstract：This paper investigates Chinese EFL learners' use of collocations on the basis of corpus data.It retrieves the significant collocates of the node word “situation”by the statistical method of Z-score, and analyzes the development of Chinese EFL learners' collocational competence. The findings indicate that Chinese learners often use unconventional blocked collocations, thus lacking naturalness and idiomaticity in language production. The learners show inaccuracy in the use of “Verb Noun”collocations and lack of variety in the use of “Adj. Noun”collocations. The learners' writing is not cohesive due to their use of blocked collocations, which fall into an improper lexical co-occurrence.

Keyword：corpus;learner;blocked collocation;lexical co-occurrence;