Beginners question: Strategic ideas When I am watching chess lessons, the mentor mostly uses the phrase: 'lets look at the board and find some ideas'.
As a beginner, I can't get passed the: 'look at what pieces you can grab.'

Question: What keywords or ideas should a beginner teach his/her chessmind to evaluate a chessboard better?
There are two main categories for motifs in chess. Those are strategic and tactical motifs. Beginners should should focus on tactical motifs because strategic advantages are much smaller and negligible compared to material advantage, which tactics are usually the cause of.
chesstempo has a good list of these.

http://chesstempo.com/tactical-motifs.html