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.