Meaning & use
self-development
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Meanings
noununcountable
the process of improving your own skills, knowledge, or character through your own efforts.
Grammar: No plural and no 'a': do some self-development, not 'a self-development'.
Patterns
- personal self-development
- invest in self-development
- a self-development course
She spends an hour every morning on self-development, reading and practicing new skills.
The company pays for courses in self-development for its staff.
For him, learning to cook was part of self-development after retirement.
noununcountableformal
the growth or maturing of something by its own natural process, without outside help.
Grammar: Uncountable; common in formal writing about systems or organizations.
Patterns
- the self-development of something
The report describes the self-development of the local economy over fifty years.
They studied the self-development of the movement without government support.
Common combinations
- personal self-development
- Personal self-development was her main goal for the year.
- invest in self-development
- Many young workers invest in self-development before changing careers.
- a self-development plan
- He wrote a self-development plan with three clear goals.
- self-development course
- The library offers a free self-development course on public speaking.
- focus on self-development
- After the setback, she focused on self-development instead of blaming others.
Synonyms and how they differ
- personal growth
- Very close in meaning, but it often stresses emotional and psychological change rather than skills.
- self-improvement
- Almost the same; it is more common in everyday speech and often suggests fixing weaknesses.
Word family
- develop verb
- to grow or make something grow
- development noun
- the process of growing or improving
- developmental adjective
- relating to growth or development
- self-develop verb
- to improve your own abilities; less common
Commonly confused: self-development or self-employment?
self-development vs self-employment
Self-employment means working for yourself rather than for a company; self-development means improving yourself.
Practice
Choose the sentence that uses 'self-development' correctly.
Choose one answer.
'Self-development' is uncountable, so it cannot take 'a' or a plural, and it is a noun, not a verb. Only option C uses it correctly as an uncountable noun.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “self-development”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.