The Influence of Parental Education Level and Emotional Support on Children's Second Language Acquisition——An Empirical Study Based on Emergentist Theoryand National Longitudinal Data

Pan Yifei

Jinshen College of Nanjing Audit University

Abstract：

Against the background of globalization and the internationalization of education, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) has become an important topic in the fields of education, linguistics, and sociology. Existing studies generally acknowledge that family environment plays a crucial role in children’s language development; however, there remains a lack of systematic macro-level empirical research on how parental educationlevel andemotional support jointly influence children’s second language acquisition. Based on Emergentist Theory, thisstudy integrates data from national databases including CFPS, CEPS, PISA, and NCEQM. By employing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), Propensity Score Matching (PSM), and Bootstrap mediation analysis, the study systematically examines the mechanisms through which parental education, emotional support, and family language environment affect children’s English proficiency development. The results indicate that: (1) Higherparental education significantly improves children’s English achievement and reading literacy; (2) Positive emotional support significantly enhances language learning performance; (3) Emotional support demonstrates a compensatory effect in low-education families; (4) Family book resources and extracurricular reading behavior play important mediating roles in transforming educational resources into language competence; (5) These effects exhibit significant age heterogeneity and cumulative developmental characteristics over time. The findings further validate the core proposition of Emergentist Theory concerning the “dynamic interaction of multiple constraints.” This study not only extends family-based analyses in SLA research but also provides new empirical evidence for educational equity and family education policy.

Key Words：

second language acquisition; emergentist theory; parental education; emotional support; structural equation modeling; educational equity