Feedback has been shown to be beneficial to learning, particularly in the verbal domain. An unexplored attribute of feedback that may affect feedback effectiveness is learners' ability to choose feedback when they want or need to receive it. Successful metacognitive monitoring may allow one to properly assess when one needs feedback and will, therefore, allow one to improve as much as if one had received automatic feedback. Thus, the effectiveness of subject-chosen feedback vs. automatic and no feedback was assessed while Rice University undergraduates attempted to learn foreign-language vocabulary. Subject-chosen and automatic feedback resulted in similar performance on immediate and delayed recall tests, despite inequities in total feedback received. Additionally, the use of deceptive stimuli showed that accurate metacognitive monitoring in the decision to receive feedback is quite robust and, therefore, subject-chosen feedback can still be beneficial in these circumstances.