Feedback plays an intervention role in the writing process. It is through feedback that writers are guided to achieve negotiated writing goals. Feedback encourages a process of discovery and this plays a developmental role in the writing process. In this paper, we report on three case studies that sought to understand cognitive processes when writers attended to feedback. Three ESL postgraduate students were asked to think aloud while attending to lecturer written feedback. Concurrent verbal protocols were analysed qualitatively using computer assisted data analysis software called Nvivo8. The findings from this study indicate that attending to written feedback is a recursive process. While recursively attending to feedback, the writers planned globally, locally, reflected, and justified. The findings suggest that dialogical type of feedback encourage recursiveness and planning. These are essential for the potential development of a writer. (Contains 1 figure.)