Input variability in foreign language verb-argument construction learning: a primary school intervention

Journal article

Input variability (i.e., varied experience with different exemplars; “[talk/think/rant/wonder] about [god/bicycles/dogs]”) can improve generalization (i.e., “[Verb] about [Noun]”) and enhance learning. Controlled experiments show that input variability benefits children’s generalization and extension of linguistic information from input structures to novel contexts (Wonnacott et al., 2012). Such findings drove our investigation into extending input variability benefits to classrooms.

Following a usage-based constructionist approach, we present a two-week quasi-experimental teaching intervention with two British Year 2 classes learning German (6-to-7-year-olds; 20 students/class). The intervention featured a variability and no-variability condition, using 16 German 'approach' event verb-argument constructions (“To the X [verb] the Y”), featuring four or one different verbs in the verb slot, respectively. Post-tests indicated that children exposed to variability generalized better to novel verbs. The findings corroborate controlled experiments. Even in “noisy” classrooms, input variability can benefit students’ construction generalization and extension to novel verbs.

Authors: Schulz, J; Victoria, M; Wonnacott, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Language Learning
• Publication date: 2026-08-03
• Acceptance date: 2026-05-08
• DOI: 10.1111/lang.70051
• EISSN: 1467-9922
• ISSN: 0023-8333
• Language: English
• Keywords: input variability; primary school; German as a foreign language; intervention; communicative agency