The term CLIL was created in 1994 by David Marsh as a methodology similar to but distinct from language immersion and content-based instruction.
Among CLIL's proponents and practitioners there is Maurizio Morselli, a Human Resources professional and Executive Coach, who believes that "this hybrid immersion approach produces a lot more immediate results and it appeals to self-motivated adult audiences who possess a basic knowledge and understanding of the target language".
While being certainly interesting and providing a precious model of good practice, this experience shows that "there is validity in the belief that CLIL is an elite phenomenon [...].
It comes as no surprise that one of the current strands of international CLIL research stems indeed from the urgency to address issues of power and inequality [...].
The heterogeneity that has characterised the implementation of CLIL since its inception in Italy risks exacerbating this situation, with areas of the country that are more developed both linguistically and socio-economically reaping the greatest benefits of the approach.
This kind of approach has been identified as very important by the European Commission[5] because: "It can provide effective opportunities for pupils to use their new language skills now, rather than learn them now for later use.
In some ways, this is an inevitable result of terms being used outside of academia, by educators applying ideas from one context to another,[11] and the lines of demarcation become more unclear as approaches are transported to different countries and contextualized to meet different learning situations.
[2] In EIL studies, different terms have been associated with different regions, such as CLIL, which is associated with Europe, and was "purposefully coined" by European educators and researchers attempting to influence language policy and ideology.