Sam-Michel Cembalo gives his definition of self-directed learning.
It’s a way of learning the language that doesn’t involve teaching. Self-directed learning is the practice itself. It’s based on the idea of autonomy, autonomy being a capacity. Practice means learning by yourself and the aim of the self-directed learning system, or at least the systems I’ve been involved in, is to provide people who are learning the language with the means to learn it in a reasoned way for themselves. Each learner has a different path and so we try to provide them with the means to find their path and the means to find them consciously, voluntarily, not to find them by chance, but to find them in a reasoned way.
self-directed learning