With an increasing number of Chinese college students taking IELTS (academic) test to pursue further study, this research aims to answer the question of “how do Chinese college ESL learners at different proficiency levels adopting IELTS academic task 2 model essays as feedback tool?” This study was under the assumption that exemplars demonstrates features of the highest criteria and been widely used among college ESL learners as feedback but been relatively unexplored. In this study, think-aloud research method followed by interviews were used to gather data on two proficiency levels, namely, intermediate level learners who got 5.5 or 6 and more proficient learners who got 7 in IELTS test in the past six months. The Language Related Episode (LRE) were than classified into lexical, form, discourse and content built on the Qi and Lapkin (2001)’s coding schemes. The preliminary findings have shown that learners irrespective language proficiency registered predominately more on the macro-level textual construction and their self-reflexivity LREs had preponderant concern on coherence, while the lexical and form aspects have been downplayed. The pedagogical implication in process-oriented approach was then discussed.