Since the curriculum is concerned with a general rationale for formulating policy decisions, it combines educational-cultural goals with language goals. For example, an overall educational approach could focus on one of the following major goals:
- a behavioristic orientation considers the human species to be a passive organism, reacting to external, environmental stimuli;
- a rational-cognitive orientation considers the human species to be the source and initiator of all acts; and
- a humanistic orientation is concerned with each individual’s growth and development while emphasizing affective factors as well.
- The behavioristic view is an educational-psychological philosophy that is compatible with a structuralist view of language and a stimulus-response view about human language learning.
- The rational-cognitive orientation became strongly reflected in the views of human language proposed by transformational-generative linguistics in the 1960s and was associated with the cognitive-code approach to language learning.
Contemporary approaches which link a rational-cognitive view with a communicative orientation towards language use:
- Silent Way approach. Developed by Gattegno (1972) have distinct affinities with a rational-cognitive orientation in the way in which they both emphasize the learning of language forms
- Natural Approach. Developed by Krashen and Terrel (1983). This approach has much in common with other contemporary views which emphasize the importance of listening and comprehension at the onset of learning – among them Silent way.
3. The humanistic orientation has been closely associated with the communicative view of language.