DO or MAKE? - English Grammar - Difference Between 'Do' and 'Make' - with Examples & Exercises

Hi and welcome to Learn English Lab. My name is Ganesh and in this lesson I'm

going to teach you how to use make and do correctly. Before we begin

just remember if you have any questions at all just put them in the comments

section below and I will talk to you there.

Ok now with make and do if you're like most students you might have wondered

why do we use make with some actions and do with other actions.

Well unfortunately there's no single rule in English that I can give you and

say in all of these situations use make and in all of these situations use do.

There's no such rule in English. However there is a simple guideline that you can

follow to make the right choice in most situations, and that is that we use do

to talk about activities and we use make to talk about creating, producing or

constructing something.

Let's talk about do first

Now when I say do this verb can occur in any of these forms - it can occur as do in

the present simple tense, it can occur as did in the past simple, done is the past

participle form and doing is the -ing or the continuous form. One very common use

of do is to talk about jobs or tasks such as homework. Children have to do

their homework. They don't make their homework - that doesn't really mean anything,

children do their homework. OK or you might have to do your housework.

Housework means things around the house - cleaning washing etc. For example with

dishes or laundry we use do. Let's say your friend calls you

and your friend asks "Hey what are you doing?" and you might say "Hey I can't talk

now, I'm doing the dishes" or "I'm doing the laundry."

"Can I call you back later?" That means you're washing the dishes or you're washing

your clothes. You can also do a job or if you're a businessperson you do business.

We don't use make with any of these. We also use do to talk about exercise and

physical activities.

It's very important to do exercise regularly or you might do yoga for

example. You will also find do in this sort of structure - you'll have do

and then you'll have a quantity expression like some, a lot of, a little

bit etc. and then you will have a verb with -ing like walking, shopping or

sightseeing. For example, yesterday evening I had some free time so I did

some walking around the neighborhood. I did some walking around the neighborhood

Tomorrow if I have time, I might do a little bit of shopping. When I went to

Spain on vacation with my family,

we did a lot of sightseeing. We did a lot of sightseeing

So this is a very useful form that you can use - do and then a quantity

expression like some, a lot of etc. and then an -ing form. Number three is a very

common expression in English - Can you do me a favor? Some people make mistakes

with this - they use make sometimes. That's wrong.

Can you do me a favor? Favor is basically a way of asking for help

but a favor is a little bit stronger; the other person might have to make a

lot of effort to do you a favor, and usually this means that you will return

the favor in some future time.

That is you will help them in return sometime in the future. The expression is

Can you do me a favor? And finally with any of these words and all of these talk

about activities in general without being specific: anything, nothing

something, everything etc. With all of these we only use do. For example let's

say you meet a friend and you ask that friend

"Hey what are you doing on Saturday?" and your friend says "Oh I'm not doing

anything or I'm doing nothing on Saturday/" and then you might ask "Oh do

you want to do something?" That means "Do you want to plan something?"

"Shall we go out together or do something together?" In that situation we're not

talking about any activity specifically, we're talking in general and similarly

with everything as well. So for all of these we use do.

OK so that's how you use the verb do, let's now talk about make. As I said in

the beginning make is used to talk about creating, producing or constructing

something, and make occurs in these forms - make in the present, made in both the

past simple and the past participle form, and making is the -ing or the continuous

form. Perhaps the most popular use of make is to talk about food. When I wake

up every morning, I make breakfast.

I don't usually have time to make lunch because I have to rush to work so I just

eat at the canteen or the restaurant, but when I get home from work I often

make dinner.

So in all of these cases we use make and not do. You can also make a cake -

My wife made a cake for our daughter's birthday. Of course you can also say bake,

so that means you can make or bake a cake. Sounds nice right?

A common question that we ask to visitors that come to our homes is "Shall

I make you a cup of tea?" or "Do you want me to make you a cup of tea or a cup of

coffee?"

I enjoy making pasta. Maybe you enjoy making pizza. So for any kind of food we

use make - that means to cook.

OK the next category is actions related to speech - let's say you are in a meeting

room and there's a lot of people talking and there's a meeting happening.

You might ask "Can I make a suggestion?"

"Can I make a suggestion?" That means you want to give a suggestion to the group

or some people might be upset because someone made a nasty comment. We make

comments. You can also make a phone call to someone. Now this next set of words

are all words relating to thought and this is an area where a lot of students

make mistakes.

We make decisions and we make choices between two options. We don't do

decisions or do choices. In the same way if you're working on a project you will

need to make a plan for the project or if you're going on a trip you will need

to make the arrangements.

Many students use do for some of these - they say we have to do a plan or do the

arrangements. Do the arrangements is not so bad because the other person will

understand what you say but the correct word to use is make. OK? Alright now

before I forget with all of these just think of it as creating these things. For

example in that meeting room there is no suggestion until you create the

suggestion so you make the

suggestion. If you're going on that trip you're, in a sense, you're creating the

arrangements because the arrangements don't exist so you make the arrangements.

Alright and finally I have a list of words that are very common. They're

common collocations of make. That means they occur together with make and with

some of these there's no reason why we use make - it's just how the English

language is so you'll just have to memorize these expressions. We're all

human right? So we all make mistakes, we don't do mistakes. If you say do a

mistake

that's a mistake. OK? We make mistakes. And when people make mistakes often they

make excuses. An excuse is saying reasons for why you made a mistake

So we make excuses. One way to avoid making mistakes and excuses is to make a

list like a checklist of all the things you have to do, so you can just tick tick

tick and then you hopefully won't make any mistakes

Children love to make noise. Of course animals can make noise and machines can

make noise as well but children really like to make a lot of noise with their

toys when they're playing, and speaking of children one thing that they hate

doing is to make the bed. Now you might ask here

what does it mean to make the bed? Does that mean to create a bed? No make the

bed simply means to arrange the covers or sheets and the pillows on a bed and

make the bed ready for someone to sleep in. OK? So you make your bed

It's very important to make an effort in anything that you do

We make efforts and we also make attempts/ We don't do efforts, we don't do

attempts. Here you might ask why is that? Because effort

is like work right? We have to use do with work

Well again there's no reason. This is just how the English language is so with

efforts and attempts use make. If you make an effort in business you might be

very successful and you might make a lot of money. Make money doesn't mean to

create money. Only the government can do that. Make money means to earn money. It's

also very important to make sense when we speak and write. Make sense means to

speak or write meaningfully. And last but not least we make friends. Make friends

means to become friends with people.

So those are the most common uses of make. Now as a quick recap, just remember

that we use do for activities and make to talk about creating, producing or

constructing something. Now if you are confused about whether to use do or

make in a situation and you're not sure, just use do and your meaning will be

clear in most situations. Alright now it's time for a test to see if you can

use make and do correctly.

OK, on the screen there are 10 sentences and in each sentence you have to choose

between do and make. Take a moment now and pause the video if you like. Think

about your answers and then we will discuss them. Alright let's look at the

answers. Number one

Nicholas asked me if I could do him a favor.

Number two - Please excuse me for a few minutes. I have to go outside and make a

phone call.

Number three - Have you started making arrangements for the wedding yet?

Number four - The company does business in 18 countries around the world.

Number five - Ruby failed the exam because she never made any effort to study for

it.

Number six - I haven't yet made a decision on whether or not to accept the job

offer.

Number seven - Stop making excuses and just admit that you made a mistake. It's

make in both cases.

Number eight - Doctors recommend doing at least three hours of physical activity

per week.

Number nine - Something is wrong with my laptop. It's suddenly making a lot of

noise.

Number ten - Let's make a list of all the things we need to take on our camping

trip.

Alright, did you get them all right? I hope you did. Don't forget to subscribe

to this channel and as always, if you have any questions at all just let me

know in the comments section and I'll talk to you there.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson and I'll see you in another lesson soon.