Everyday French – Ep. 10 : Mes résolutions pour 2026
In this episode, we talk about New Year’s resolutions — the tradition of setting goals on January 1st, why we often give them up, and how to stick to them better.
Transcript
📄 Click to read the transcript
Hello everyone and welcome to this 10th episode of Everyday French, a podcast to help you understand natural French.
First I'd like to start this episode by wishing you a happy new year. We're already in 2026, and I hope the end-of-year holidays went really well for you. I also hope this new year brings you a lot of happiness, a lot of success in your personal and professional life.
So to kick off this year, I've planned a little episode about resolutions, since we all know that generally, when the year changes, we like to make promises to ourselves and try to change things in our lives.
So let's go, we're going to talk about that today!
So like everyone else, I've also planned some little resolutions for this year. My first resolution is to try to improve my work, because I work a lot, actually, I have a lot of students. And I'd like to manage to improve a bit what I offer during and after classes. Because during my classes, I try to always offer my students exercises, audio — for example the podcasts I'm making now — that's also for my students. So I'd like to manage to offer more things, interesting, fun things, so that everyone finds something for them — so that's my first resolution.
My second resolution is to keep doing things for myself, meaning managing to balance work and personal life. I really want to keep exercising, eating healthy, really managing to combine both, because it's not easy when you're self-employed to manage to have a healthy life alongside your work. There are also people who have office jobs, and for them too it's hard to combine both. But anyway, I'd like to really keep doing what I'm doing, what I've already put in place, while also improving my work.
My third resolution — for those who don't know, I studied Chinese for several years. And since I came back to France, it's actually harder to keep practicing, even though I try to listen a lot. I don't really have time to read, but I'd really like to improve that side of things — I'd like to practice more, maybe try to write, try to read more. Improve, or at least keep the level I have, and above all not lose it, because we all know that not practicing is really the worst way to lose, actually to lose everything you've learned. And that would be a shame — I studied Chinese for, I don't even remember, maybe 10 years or so. So if I forget everything, I'd be really disappointed, especially since it's a language I'm really passionate about.
My fourth resolution — I already talked about it a bit in my second one — is actually cooking more, and especially doing what's called batch cooking, I don't know if you know it. It's a technique where you cook once during the week for the whole week. It's a technique that's supposed to help save time and always have prepared dishes in the fridge or freezer. And it lets you save time, and above all avoid eating junk food when you haven't prepared anything — so I'd really like to try to develop that this year.
(…)
So what about you, what are your resolutions for 2026? Are you someone who makes resolutions, or do you know very well that you won't stick to them, and you'd rather not make any? Feel free to tell me in the comments, and I'll see you next week for a new episode. Happy new year and see you soon
Key Vocabulary
- une résolution (n. f.) — commitment you make to yourself to change a behaviour or reach a goal — resolution
Ex. : Ma résolution pour cette année, c'est de lire un livre par mois. - un objectif (n. m.) — specific goal you set yourself to achieve within a defined timeframe — goal / objective
Ex. : Pour progresser, il faut se fixer des objectifs clairs et réalistes. - tenir (v.) — here: to keep a commitment, not to abandon it — to keep (a promise / resolution)
Ex. : Je tiens à ma résolution — je cours trois fois par semaine depuis janvier. - abandonner (v.) — to stop doing something, to give up on a goal — to give up / to abandon
Ex. : Beaucoup de gens abandonnent leurs résolutions en février. - la motivation (n. f.) — energy and desire that drives you to act and persevere — motivation
Ex. : Pour tenir ses résolutions, il faut trouver une vraie source de motivation.
Expression of the Day
🗣️ prendre de bonnes résolutions — to set positive goals for the year, usually on January 1st — closely linked to New Year
Example : Cette année, j’ai pris de bonnes résolutions : plus de sport, moins de sucre et apprendre le français !
📌 to make New Year’s resolutions — prendre here means “to take on” rather than simply “to take”.