DON'T DO a mistake | Build your vocabulary with USEFUL collocations + FREE pdf

Hi there, this is Harry and welcome back  to advanced English lessons with Harry  

where I try to help you to get a better  understanding of the English language,  

you might be preparing for some proficiency  test in English or you might be preparing  

for a job interview. Or you might simply just  want to improve your work in business English,  

and your conversational English. Whatever it is,  you're in the right place. And if you have any  

problems, any issues, any difficulties, anything  you want me to include, just drop me a line,  

I'll give you the address at the end of this  particular lesson. I'd be happy to prepare  

a lesson just on that particular topic. Okay,  so in this particular advanced English lesson,  

we're looking at common expressions with  make common expressions with makes an  

advanced English lesson, common expressions with  make. Now a lot of students confuse make and do,  

what do we make and what do we do. Let  me just give you a quick note about that.

Make is typically used when we talk about creating  something. So that's the most important thing,  

you make something. For example, my mother made a  cake yesterday, my mother made a cake yesterday.  

This table cloth on the table is made of  linen. This table cloth is made of linen.  

BMW cars are made in Germany. So they're all  things you can touch, you can feel, you can see,  

okay. They are tangible. So my mother made  a cake yesterday. The tablecloth is made of  

linen. And the BMW car is made in Germany. So  when we use make, it's about things we create.

Now, when we talk about do, it's when  we talk about doing some activity.  

For example, doing your homework, doing your  household chores at the weekend, if you do those,  

so it's all about general activities. Okay, so  that's the key difference between make and do.

And in this lesson, I'm going to focus  just on make so I don't confuse you. Okay,  

so all of these expressions are  common expressions with make,  

these are not the most common because a lot  of the common ones are very, very easy. Okay,  

so I'm not going to talk about making breakfast  or making your bed, which are simple examples of  

it to make the breath breakfast every morning,  make your bed when you when you get up before  

you go to work. So I'm going to look at ones  that are a little bit more complicated yet,  

or maybe ones that you may not have used, but you  can try to use them. So I've got 20 on my list.

To make a deal. Yeah. So when we make a deal  with somebody, we agree about something, okay.  

It could be to make a deal about buying somebody's  car. Yeah, okay. Or you could make a deal to sell  

him your house or to buy his house. So you shake  hands, you make a deal. So somebody might quite  

simply say, Okay, are you happy with the price?  Yeah, okay, let's make a deal on that which fix  

that price. And then you fix the date or you sign  a contract. And when the contract is ready, then  

you make the payment to make a deal we can make  at the deadline, okay. So if you've got a project  

that you're working on, it could be a school  project, university project, a project and work or  

just simply, it could be you're redecorating your  house, or you're refurbishing some of the rooms,  

and you put together a plan, and you've got  deadlines when you want to get things completed.  

So you make the deadline, or you don't make the  deadline. We have to work harder this week so  

that we can make that deadline by the end of the  month, otherwise, we won't get bonuses. Okay,  

so it's very straightforward way to use it. Do  you think we will make the deadline? Meaning do  

you think we'll achieve what we have to achieve  by that date, 12 o'clock, midnight or close of  

business on the Friday, whatever the deadline  happens to be. We can make a fool of ourselves.  

I've done it plenty of times, you get absolutely  terribly drunk, you fall over and everybody laughs  

and you make a fool of yourself or you say them  inappropriate thing at the wrong time you go,  

oops, I don't think I should have said that.  So you make a fool of yourself. So to make a  

fool of yourself is when you say or do  something that other people find funny,  

or strange or embarrassing. And you can only say,  Oops, sorry,yeah. To make a fool of yourself.

You could be very, very lucky and you can make a  fortune. You can win the lotto and make a fortune.  

You can have a brilliant idea and invent the next  app and make a fortune. You could just sit back on  

your bomb and you can inherit lots of money from a  wealthy aunt, uncle or parents and make a fortune.  

Okay, so to make a fortune means to come into a  lot of money for something that you have done. Or  

if you sit in on your bum and it's inherited,  then for something you haven't done, okay,  

except being born into the right family. Make a  fortune. We can make a fuss of somebody, okay,  

so if we, our favourite aunt or uncle, or our  favourite niece or nephew, or our grandparents,  

we make a fuss of them because we really liked  them. We really liked spending time with them,  

we don't see them so often. So we make a fuss, we  get the cakes ready, the tea ready. And when they  

arrive, we welcome them with open arms, we give  them the favourite chair, we bring them the paper,  

we chat them, and then we give them some food. So  we make a fuss of people. We can make a fuss of  

our pet dog, lots of people you see make a fuss  of their dog because they're really excited and  

and enjoy spending time with the dog or cat. So  they make a fuss of them. Buy them things, have  

them a nice, soft, comfy bed to sleep all of those  sorts of things. And we can also say to somebody,  

don't make a fuss. So if you're going to visit  your friends you can invite there and you say,  

Ah, great to be.... lovely to come across  and and see you and the kids again. But look,  

don't make a fuss, I'd be there be there for  a couple of hours. I don't need anything,  

whatever you're eating it. So don't go to  any trouble. Don't please don't make a fuss.

To make a mess. Kids love making a mess. Kids make  a mess. They don't even realise it and you look in  

the room you think a bomb had exploded. There's  clothes everywhere, books everywhere. You know,  

the bed is all messy. So ha you just close  the door and go downstairs and go oh my god,  

what a mess. So they make a mess. Or you tell them  okay, you can play upstairs in the attic room. But  

promise me don't make a mess. And of course you  go up the place is upside down. To make a mess.

To make a mistake. Now we don't do a mistake.  This is a classic mistake that people make.  

Yeah. So this is where the confusion comes in. So  it's not do a mistake, it's make a mistake. Oh,  

I made a mistake. I'll have to erase that and  start again. So if you're like me when you're  

typing, trying to type quickly, on your laptop  keyboard, occasionally you hit the wrong letter  

or you hit the wrong key. And something happens.  Yeah, so you make a mistake. Or if you're like  

me, you and you you book, flight tickets to go  to a different country and you arrive there on  

the 21st of May. And you wonder why your ticket  won't let you through electronic gate. When the  

security guy comes to you and says, Yeah,  this ticket was free yesterday. So you,  

you booked the ticket for the day before  and you arrived the following day, because  

you just misread as I did misread the ticket.  So to make a mistake. Oops, I made a mistake.

To make a point. But when you make a  point, you want to tell somebody something,  

you want to tell somebody something important.  You want to make sure people understand. So if  

you're in the meeting, and somebody says something  that you don't agree with, then you say excuse me,  

I'd like to make a point here. So there's  something you want to say, to correct somebody  

to make sure they understand what is happening, or  to make sure to let them know that they're they're  

making a mistake and something they have said and  you want to correct the situation. So you want to  

make a point. Oh, that was a good point he made  yesterday. So you can use it in that context also.  

But we can we have another way to use  make a point. So if somebody tells you,  

or your wife or your partner tells you  or don't forget your mother's birthday,  

it's the day after tomorrow, okay, and make a  point of calling her today and our call round  

and ordering cake and flowers because she likes  that. So to make a point of doing something to  

sort of put a mental note in your mental  diary to make sure that you call her. You  

buy the flowers and you go around to see  her to make a point of doing something.

To make a promise. Oh, well, we all make  promises. And sometimes we don't always  

keep them. So there's a wonderful expression.  Don't make a promise you cannot keep. Okay?  

Better off not making the promise at  all. But we promise our kids, Yes,  

I'll take you to the zoo at the weekend. Yes, I'll  play football with you on Sunday. Yes, I'll get  

you that for Christmas. If your behave yourself.  So you make a promise. Okay, you can also make a  

promise to yourself. I'm going to stop eating  sweets. I'm going to start stop eating cakes.  

But I'm going to wait until after Christmas you  make a promise to yourself or to somebody else.

What we like to do often is make friends  Okay? People like to make friends because  

they don't like to be on their own. They  go to school. The question is asked,  

Will he make friends easily? course he will.  He's he really mixes well. You go to university,  

you'd like to make new friends. When you join a  new company, you like to make friends with the  

people you work for they made the friendships may  not last forever, but it's good to make friends.

Make fun. Yeah, well, this can be good and bad.  We can make fun of somebody, which is not so  

pleasant. Yeah. Particularly if they don't like  it. Yeah, so you might laugh, and the other people  

might laugh. But the person that you are making  fun of may not laugh. So you have to be really,  

really careful. It's not too personal. Yeah. But  if we make fun, yeah, so it's just when we have  

a good time we play board games, we play with the  kids in the garden, we run around, we jump around  

with... whatever we do. If you're on a holiday,  and you've got a pool, you jump in and out of the  

pool up and down the slide and all these other  crazy things, and you make fun. We often say  

to the kids, well, you don't need me, you can make  your own fun. Yeah, you can make fun out of boxes,  

you can make fun out of Lego, you can make fun  of absolutely everything, if you have some sort  

of ideas in your head. So you know, you just  need to have an imagination. So to make fun.

There's an expression using do here, but  I'll explain it to you. To make do. Okay,  

it's not a mistake, okay. To make do means just to  accept something. So usually to accept something  

less than what you had hoped for. So you wanted  to cook something in the evening. But you know,  

you haven't been to the supermarket for quite a  few days, and you're not quite sure what's in the  

fridge. And your partner says, Well, look, we're  just ordering some food. Now I don't really want  

to it's so unhealthy. I'll make do with what's in  the fridge. So you open the fridge, and you've got  

some eggs, and you've got some pasture, and you've  got some tomatoes. And so there's enough here,  

I'll make do with what I have here, I'll come up  with some sort of omelette, or something that we  

can we can eat, it will be very, very tasty. So  to make do means to put up with what you have,  

because either just can't be bothered to do  something else. Oh, it'd be quite sufficient. Now.  

Will that make do? Will you be able to do what  you want with that? Ah, yes, that will be fine.  

I'll make do with the eggs, and these vegetables  and come up with a nice omelette. To make do.

We all work after we've left university or  whatever we've done our training we've done  

because we have to or need to make a living,  okay. So we make a living. As a doctor,  

we make a living as a financial controller, we  make a living as inoperative in an IT company,  

whatever it is that you do or not, you might  not do it all your life, but this is how you  

make a living. So somebody might just ask you  the simple question, how do you make a living?  

What it means is, What job do you do? What work  do you do? How do you get your income? Okay,  

so it's a question. How do you make a living?  It's a statement, I would like to make a decent  

living. I'd like a job that will allow me to rent  my own home, buy my own home, stop my family,  

whatever it might be to make a living. Somebody,  one of the kids might have a wonderful idea about  

what they want to be in your car. That's  great. It's a really, really interesting  

job. But will you make a living? Meaning, Will  you get enough money to get the things you want  

to do the travelling you want to do to buy  the car you want to buy? Whatever it might  

be to make a living. Or question. Will you make  a living? Or can you make a living out of that?

To make yourself heard, to make yourself known  and to make yourself understood. So these are  

three similar ways I'll just explain them.  So system it's to make yourself either heard,  

understood, or known. So how do you make yourself  heard? Well, you might have to speak up a little  

more loudly, okay. Or perhaps you'd have  to speak a little bit more intellectually,  

or with a little bit more knowledge and  then that way you can make yourself heard.  

To make yourself understood, sometimes you  have to speak a little bit more plainly,  

a little more clearly. And indeed, when you're  teaching English to make yourself understood,  

you have to speak a little bit more slowly. So  sometimes I get accused of speaking a little  

bit too quickly. So apologies for that, but to  make yourself understood, it's more important  

to speak clearly than to speak slowly. Okay, so  to speak clearly to make yourself understood,  

to make yourself known well, if you do something  that people recognise you for your your score,  

the winning goal for the school football team. Or  you get the best sales in your department, two or  

three months in a row. You get married to the best  looking girl in the university, you're certainly  

make yourself known for those good reasons. Okay,  so make yourself known, understood and heard.

When we talk when we explain something,  or when we're making presentations,  

we want to make sense. Okay? So, you know, we want  to talk sense, we don't want to talk nonsense,  

we want to talk sense, you want to make sense.  So when we make sense, things are clear things  

are understood. And things are very, very  well explained. Now, if somebody like,  

typically when kids get excited or upset, they  start talking and crying at the same time. And  

it's very, very hard to know what they're trying  to say. So the parent will come or try to calm the  

child down, say, Come on, you're not making sense.  What happened? Take a deep breath. And tell me  

slowly. So I wish you would make sense. Okay, so  you're all you look at something, and it's quite  

puzzling. And you're trying to figure it out and  see if this just just doesn't make sense at all.  

I mean, this, this is all over the place. I  mean, what are we supposed to do with this,  

so you have to try and start from the beginning,  and work your way through, like unravelling a  

ball of string to get to the other end, so that  you can make sense of whatever message you got,  

whatever instructions were given, or whatever  email was sent to you. To make sense of it.

Now, to make someone's day. Do you remember the  movies? Go on, make my day make my day. So yes,  

this is the old Clint Eastwood phrase  and some of his Dirty Harry movies. Yeah,  

so not me, Dirty Harry. So he was  a detective. And he said, you know,  

some punk or some thief, he really wanted  to shoot or as he would say, to blow away,  

he said, Go on, make my day. So when you make  someone's day, you make it a special day,  

you buy your wife a really wonderful present,  if she lets you know what you want for what  

she wants for her birthday or Christmas, then you  can make her day. So when she opens the present,  

there it is wonderful sparkling diamond, or  the new camera, whatever it is, she wanted to  

make her day. So when you make someone's day, you  make it special, something for them to remember.

Next, and this number 17 to make  time. We can make time for someone,  

we can make time for everyone, we  can make time for ourselves, it means  

allocating particularly amount of time in the  day just for you allocating a particular amount  

of time to spend with the kids. Yeah,  so all you might just say to the boss,  

I'll just leave it there or send me the file,  I'll make time somehow. And I'll get it done.  

So you'll squeeze it in to your very, very  busy schedule to make time for something.

Now, just before I go on  there, just like to ask you,  

if you do feel that you like this  particular lesson, and please like  

the video, and if you can subscribe to the  channel, because it really, really helps.

Okay, let's just get back to our lesson.  And remember, we're talking about advanced  

English expressions about make. Okay, so only  got a few more to do. We're on number 18. Now,  

so three more. Make believe this is a nice  expression that people use when they're  

talking about magic. Okay, so when somebody has a  great imagination, yeah, they think of something,  

it could be about Peter Pan or some other  story. And they reenact it in their room,  

and they dress up and they really believe  it, they really believe it's, it's really  

happening. So we say, Ah, it's make believe  to make something or believe that something  

is actually happening. So fairy stories, when or  Santa Claus, whatever it happens to be, a little  

bit of make believe is good for people to feel  that it is in fact reality, okay. Make believe.

Then we have an expression, make or break, it's  make or break. Now, when we use that expression,  

make or break, it means that either something will  be successful, or it will be a failure. So there's  

no in between. So you might get an expression like  this situation, company is doing. Okay, but then  

it runs into some difficult trading months. And  you're talking to other partners and say, Well,  

look, I think the next few months are going  to be really make or break. If we don't get a  

few new customers, or those customers we have if  they don't pay those fees, we don't chase them,  

then we're going to have a cash flow problem. And  really, it's going to be touch and go whether this  

business survive. So it's going to be a really  make or break time for us. So we need to put in  

every effort we can to get those invoices paid.  We need to put in every effort we can to find  

those new customers. We just need to do that  for the next few months. I'm sure we can was  

going to be very difficult. But yeah, there's no  air two ways about it, it's going to be make or  

break. So make or break means success or  failure, but there's nothing in between.

And then finally, we've got two makes two of us.  Yeah, that makes two of us we use this expression,  

when we want to agree with somebody at  something that they have said. So perhaps  

your friend is complaining about all the work  he has to do, complaining about the weather,  

wishing and hoping he was going on that ski  holiday next week, and not next year, that he  

could get the promotion or buy the new car, and  you say, Ha, yeah, that makes two of us. Yeah,  

I feel exactly the same way. It's been a long,  long year. And I'm just about getting to the  

end of my rope on this. So that makes two of  us. So when you want to agree with somebody,  

particularly when he's talking in a negative way,  then you can say, Ah, yeah, that makes two of us,  

okay. Meaning both of us have exactly the  same thought the same idea, the same wishes.

Okay, so they're 20 collocations or  expressions using make. As I said,  

at the very beginning, students often confuse  make and do so here we're talking about making  

concrete things. I've given you a list of them.  There... I said there are 20. So the some of  

them are a little bit unusual, you might not  have heard of them before. So practice them,  

listen to it a couple of times, listen to  my examples, and try to put in some of your  

own examples. And if you have any difficulty  and you want some more help, then as I said,  

Here's the address, www.englishlessonviaskype.com.  Very happy to hear from you. Very happy to help  

you. I really appreciate when you listen, I  really appreciate the comments that you send  

me. So this is Harry saying goodbye for this  particular lesson. And join me again soon.