Yesterday I was a complete and utter wuss (if you don’t know what "wuss" means - it’s not good) and let grammar get the better of me.  They say fear means False Evidence Appearing Real and I think that was certainly true yesterday when I moaned and groaned about learning Spanish grammar.  I reckon I made the problem much worse by putting it off.

Anyway after sleeping on it and realising that I had made a massive mountain out of a small Spanish mole hill, I decided to have another crack at learning a bit more grammar. 

I still used the remarkable Quick and Easy Spanish  program that you can get for free from www.Learn-Spanish-Free-Right-Now.com but this time I used a different approach.

You will have heard me promote the use of Mind Mapping before and I do believe it is definitely a tool that you MUST have in your toolbox for effective learning and especially if you want to learn Spanish quickly and easily.  In just a few short lines here is what a Mind Map is:

• A pictorial representation of your thought process
• A collection of key words and images organised in a radiant structure from a central image
• A colourful diagram that structures information in a similar way to that which the brain uses to store its associations

Now to give you a full blown seminar on the reasons behind this tool, to explain and demonstrate the guidelines used by the worlds’ best thinkers, to have you practce using it and to explain the many ways you could apply it in your life would take a whole day (at least).

So my brief explanation above is simply that, a brief explanation and you’d need more information to use it properly.  However if you started organising your thoughts on paper using colour, key words and pictures in a radiant structure then already you’d have taken your thinking and the organisation of your thoughts on to a completely different level.

Anyway, I used a Mind Map to help me go through some Spanish Grammar (I chose pronouns) and it really helped me get to grips with that topic.  I was much more focused, had far more fun (well as much fun as you could have studying grammar of course) and my interest was maintained for much longer.

I made some great "aha!" distinctions and layed a foundation for future learning. 

Of course grammar isn’t the most exciting subject in the world and even after my little rant yesterday about how I shall be ignoring it until I need it, I think I will actually take some time out on a regular basis and study it properly.  This is because I did get quite a bit of value from this morning’s activity - more of the mist has cleared (albeit a very small bit).

So today’s lesson - use Mind Maps