1、Like the majority of developmental studies, studies on the development of bilingualism(BL) has also recognized the importance of individual-environment interaction in thedevelopment of bilingual abilities.Factors ranging

2、 from personal characteristic, such as age andgender, family members and peers, social structure, up to popular culture can affect the outcomeof individuals' development; however, understandably, in most researches, due

3、to the difficultyof controlling and dealing with all such factors, they are excluded from analyses, resulting in theless conclusive results.Thus, now that there are fair amounts of research on various aspects ofbilingual

4、 development, it is perhaps time to ask broader questions about the way those factorscontributes to the observed variations.Ecological theory, according to which the mutualinteraction of an individual with his/her contex

5、t takes place under four levels of intertwinedenvironmental influences, has been shown to be a successful developmental model and it wouldbe an appropriate framework to take to make a better understanding of individuals'

6、 developmentof language.This thesis would be a holistic review based on such an approach, starting with theintroduction of ecological theory and language; next, after defining different types ofbilingualism and bilingual

7、 education (BE), some myths surrounding these issues will bediscussed, and then some actual findings and facts about the difference of bilinguals andmonolinguals will be revealed.As discussed in this paper, many well est

8、ablished studies havepointed out the reasons leading to the existence of such myths, and have shown and supportedthe long lasting advantages of bilingualism over individuals' language and cognitivedevelopment.The rest of

9、 the paper then, beyond the simple idea of whether bilingualism is goodor bad, attends to how different factors interact with BL/BE at each level of person-contextinteraction; following by a summary and conclusion about

10、the set of individual and contextualconditions that apparently enhance the advantages of bilingualism in a holistic view.Finally,paper ends with some recommendations and calls upon more comprehensive researches for thefu