Healthy and unhealthy habits

Lesson Overview: Healthy and Unhealthy Habits

This lesson focuses on discussing habits relating to health in French, aiming to help learners at the B1 level expand their vocabulary and expressions on this practical topic. You will learn key words and phrases to describe daily routines, choices, and behaviors that affect well-being.

Key Vocabulary and Expressions

• Les habitudes saines – healthy habits
• Les habitudes malsaines – unhealthy habits
• Manger équilibré – to eat a balanced diet
• Faire de l'exercice régulièrement – to exercise regularly
• Fumer – to smoke
• Boire de l'alcool en excès – to drink alcohol excessively
• Se coucher tôt – to go to bed early
• Passer trop de temps devant un écran – to spend too much time in front of a screen

Lesson Content Highlights

The lesson explains how to describe your daily health habits and to compare what is good or bad for your body. You learn verbs, adjectives, and useful phrases for expressing frequency, advice, and consequences:

• Using the verb devoir to give recommendations: Tu dois faire du sport (You must exercise).
• Expressing frequency with adverbs: souvent, rarement, jamais.
• Talking about effects: Le tabac est dangereux pour la santé (Tobacco is dangerous for health).

Instruction Language vs French Notes

In French, many expressions about health habits use reflexive verbs such as se coucher (to go to bed), which may not directly match English sentence structure. For example, Je me couche tôt literally means "I put myself to bed early." Also, frequency adverbs usually come immediately after the verb in French, unlike English.

Some useful phrases and their English equivalents include:
Je fais attention à mon alimentation – "I pay attention to my diet";
Il faut éviter le stress – "One must avoid stress";
Tu devrais réduire ta consommation de sucre – "You should reduce your sugar intake." These help learners express advice politely and naturally.