Most studies on second language writing (SLW) tackle the issue of feedback
explicitness from the researcher?s perspective.
Particularly, the core concept of "
explicitness" is predicted a priori according to the feedback forms, while learners? cognitive experience in online feedback processing is largely left unexplored. The present study set out to probe Chinese college?level EFL learners? online perception of feedback explicitness, and measure their post?feedback performance via a dual?dimension of error location ratio (Lr) and error
correction ratio (Cr). Results show that feedback explicitness was closely related to specific feedback forms, with the latter primarily reflecting the amount of corrective information that the feedback contains. Furthermore, differential effects obtained for feedback forms and feedback explicitness on the learners? error location and correction. These findings not only justified our distinction of feedback forms and feedback explicitness, but also led to a further inference that corrective feedback performs a dual function of both error correction and attention?raising, with the latter exerting more influence on learners? long?term development of their language competence.