musings on adult learners, self-directed learning and musical vocabulary

There's a lot of learning theory about how adults learn.  As an adult guitar learner I find it interesting to read about it and compare it with my own experience.  Some of it rings true:   yes, I read around the subject and learn things on my own; I do question why I have to practice some things and what the benefit is;  I hear pieces I like and bring them to my guitar teacher to see if I can learn them,  However some of it doesn't - in particular I'm not a fan of self-directed learning.  Ok admittedly I've probably steam-rollered my guitar teacher over the last couple of years into helping me learn what I want to play, but I am also acutely aware of the fact that I often don't know enough to make an informed decision about what to learn. As a some-time educator myself,  I understand the concept of having students reason out the answer for themselves, but it does involve the prior step of giving them or pointing them in the direction of the materials they need to figure out the answer.  In the context of guitar playing - how to give a coherent description of what I feel is missing from a piece I'm playing?   What if I know there is something wrong but can't describe it because I'm really not sure what's going on...

Come to think of it maybe I need to work on my musical vocabulary.  In pathology one of the first things the students learn is the correct way to describe things - for example there are a myriad words that can describe precisely how stuff is scattered about in a tissue (I won't bore you with them, and only being an observer rather than an actual pathologist, I'd probably get half of them mixed up). Anyway, until they learn those terms students have a hard time accurately describing what they are seeing - translating a visual medium to a written one is after all, a long way from intuitive. And in some ways merely knowing the words should open up the possibilities of things to find when examining a tissue - or in the current context, listening to how a musical piece is being played. So the next question is, where to find these magic words?  I suspect my long-suffering guitar teacher will end up with this question, however in my defense he is partially responsible because he didn't like my use of the word "clunky" - which in my opinion perfectly described the mess I was making of a pretty melody.   However I will admit there are probably more precise terms... Question is, where to find them?  Google is remarkably lacking in answers, so perhaps I'll start building a list of suggestions...

Not legato
Chopped up, punctuated, jerky, disconnected

A pronounced beat that shouldn't be there
Metronomic, heavy downbeats, 'beaty'

Opposite to lively...
ponderous, dragging, listless, dead, lifeless, strained

Uneven sound quality
bumpy, erratic, wobbly,