This article examines aspects of the second language acquisition of three newly migrated pupils (lateral entry students) in intensive classes at secondary schools. For this group of learners, as for the acquisition context of intensive classes in general, there is an urgent research desideratum. The focus of the present study is on the acquisition of grammatical competences, which are examined here using the example of the position of the verb in German. Based on the developmental stages, which can be described by central verb position structures such as separation, subject inversion or the verb-end-position in the subordinate clause, the study group is compared to recently migrated learners in other acquisition contexts based on the speed of acquisition.