Abstract List of Abbreviations List of Figures List of Tables Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Research Orientation 1.2 CF: the Target of Research 1.3 Rationale for the Study 1.4 Organization of the Thesis Chapter 2 Literature Review 2.0 Introduction 2.1 Terminological Problems 2.2 Rationale for CF in SLA: General Arguments 2.3 Cognitive Underpinnings of CF in SLA 2.4 Relative Efficacy across Feedback Forms: The Explicimess Issue 2.5 The Gap between Teacher and Learner: The Perception issue 2.6 Error Types and Task Conditions:The Permeability Issue and the Contextual Issue 2.7 A Preliminary Study on Feedback Processing:Zhu and Wang (2005) 2.8 Summary Chapter 3 Statement of the Problem 3.0 Introduction 3.1 The Unsettled Problems in CF Studies: A Revisit 3.2 Solutions in This Study 3.3 Research Questions Chapter 4 The Empirical Study 4.0 Introduction 4.1 The Quantitative Study 4.2 The Qualitative Study Chapter 5 Results 5.0 Introduction 5.1 The Quantitative Study 5.2 The Qualitative Study 5.3 Summary Chapter 6 General Discussion 6.0 Introduction 6.1 The Major Findings 6.2 The Effect of Feedback Informativeness 6.3 The Effect of Structure Complexity 6.4 The Effect of Task Orientation 6.5 The role of Metacognition 6.6 Summary Chapter 7 Conclusions, Implications, Limitations, and Suggestions for Further Research 7.0 Introduction 7.1 Conclusions 7.2 Implications 7.3 Limitations 7.4 Suggestions for Future Research References Appendix I Grammaticality-judgment Test (GJT) Appendix II Sentence Combination Test (SCT) Appendix III Discrete Error Correction (DEC) with Feedback Explicitness Survey (FES) Appendix IV Text Error Correction (TEC) with Feedback Explicitness Survey (FES)