A great way to speak more fluent English faster is to look for quick wins.

Quick wins are things that are easy to fix but have a huge impact on how natural you sound. 

Sometimes a quick win can be a simple grammar rule. Sometimes a quick win can be an expression, like today. 

First, look at these four sentences. How many of them do you think are correct and sound natural? 

• It's not the first one. ❌
• It's not the second one. ❌
• It's not the third one. ❌
• And it's not the fourth one. ❌

That's right, all of them have something wrong. 

Today's quick win is that there is one magical expression that can be used in a bunch of situations and help you avoid awkward sentences like these. 

The expression is: Look forward to.

Look forward to is a fantastic way to express that you are happy or excited about something that is going to happen. 

In today's mini-lesson, we're going to make this expression your new best friend. 😁 

Why is this so important? Honestly, it's about more than just the expression. It's important because you need to learn how to use "structures" instead of always translating word for word.

❌ Translating word for word is slow and results in unnatural expressions.

✔️ Using structures directly is fast and sounds natural.

To use structures directly, you need to play with them in different contexts via deliberate practice. 

With that in mind, let's do some practice together. 

Here's the first problem sentence. How can you express this same idea using "look forward to"? 

I'm looking forward to a new video. 

Here's the second sentence. How does "look forward to" fit here? 

I'm looking forward to watching it. 

Try to use "look forward to" with the third sentence. 

I'm looking forward to your answer. 

Here's the fourth sentence. There are two challenges here. First, how does look forward to fit, and second, can you think of a more natural way to say that you are excited about receiving somebody's news? 

I'm looking forward to hearing from you. 

To hear from someone is a common expression to talk about receiving updates or news from someone. 

As a whole, "I'm looking forward to hearing from you" is a great way to end an email. 

Hopefully, you're getting more used to "look forward to." Let's continue our deliberate practice to get even more comfortable with this structure. 

A good deliberate practice technique is to look at similar sentences using a structure to see if you can identify patterns. 

In this case, first look at the two sentences at the top of the screen from earlier to see if you can determine what they have in common. We'll use what you discover to fix the third sentence, "She is looking forward to hear more." 

You may have noticed that we followed the expression "I'm looking forward to" with an -ing verb. 

When you look for patterns, it helps you remember rules you might have learned in the past. In this case, you should always use -ing verbs after a preposition like the word "to." 

So, what's wrong with the sentence, "She is looking forward to hear more?" 

It needs to be, "She is looking forward to hearing more." 

You aren't always going to remember every grammar rule the first time you see it. 

The more you see the same rule over and over, the easier it'll be to remember it.

Let's play with this structure three more times to finish our "speed practice." 

This time, we want to say that "He" is the person that is looking forward to something. The something is "see you." What should the sentence be? 

He's looking forward to seeing you.

In this sentence, "we" is the person, "a party" is the thing, and we're going to talk about this in the past tense. What's the sentence? 

I'm sorry we had to cancel. We were looking forward to the party. 

Last one. If someone says, "see you tomorrow," and you are excited about it. What can you say in response? 

See you tomorrow! I'm looking forward to it! 

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