Make or Do?
Learn 20 A2 make and do collocations - make a decision, make an effort, do your best, do research - with a story and a quiz.
There is a rough rule for make and do, and it is worth knowing – but the honest answer is that these are collocations: fixed pairs that English speakers simply learned, one at a time. So this lesson gives you the rule in the tutor box and the twenty pairs you will actually need, and then puts every one of them into a single story. Learn them as whole phrases, never as separate words.
20 words to learn
The 20 words
/meɪk ə mɪˈsteɪk/
To do something wrongly. Never do a mistake.
Everybody makes a mistake in the first year.
/meɪk ə dɪˈsɪʒn/
To decide something. More formal than decide.
She could not make a decision for eleven months.
/meɪk ʌp jɔː ˈmaɪnd/
To finally decide, after hesitating.
Hurry up and make up your mind.
/meɪk ˈprəʊɡres/
To get better over time. Progress is uncountable.
You will make progress faster than you expect.
/meɪk ˈfrendz/
To become friendly with new people.
It is harder to make friends after thirty.
/meɪk ən ˈefət/
To try hard, especially when it is not easy.
He makes an effort with my parents and they notice.
/meɪk ə ˈmes/
To make a place untidy or dirty.
The children make a mess and disappear.
/meɪk ˈmʌni/
To earn or produce money. Never do money.
The shop did not make money for five months.
/meɪk ə ˈdɪfrəns/
To have a real, positive effect.
One good teacher can make a difference to a whole class.
/meɪk ˈʃʊə(r)/
To check that something is true or done.
Make sure the door is locked.
/duː jɔː ˈhəʊmwɜːk/
To do the work a teacher gives you. Never make homework.
He does his homework at the kitchen table.
/duː ðə ˈʃɒpɪŋ/
To buy the food and things a home needs.
I do the shopping on Saturday mornings.
/duː ðə ˈhaʊswɜːk/
To clean and tidy the home. Uncountable.
Somebody has to do the housework.
/duː ðə ˌwɒʃɪŋ ˈʌp/
To wash the plates after a meal. Americans say do the dishes.
You cooked, so I will do the washing-up.
/duː jɔː ˈbest/
To try as hard as you can.
Just do your best and stop worrying.
/duː ˈeksəsaɪz/
To do physical activity. Never make exercise or make sport.
I do exercise before work or not at all.
/duː ˈbɪznəs/
To trade or work with another company.
We do business with three shops on this street.
/duː rɪˈsɜːtʃ/
To study something carefully to find information.
She spent a month doing research before she signed anything.
/duː ˈsʌmbɒdi ə ˈfeɪvə(r)/
To help somebody as a kindness.
Do me a favour and say nothing.
/duː ˈdæmɪdʒ/
To harm something. Also do harm. Damage is uncountable.
Waiting too long did more damage than any mistake.
Now read the story
Story · all 20 words
The Shop on Fahed Street
My sister spent eleven months failing to make up her mind, and then opened the shop in three weeks.
She had worked in other people’s shops since she was nineteen, and she had watched more than one owner make a mistake that she was certain she could avoid. But wanting something and deciding it are different things, and for almost a year she could not make a decision at all.
What finally moved her was our father, who did not encourage her, because he is not that kind of man. He simply asked her one Sunday whether she had done any actual work on the idea or only thought about it. She spent the following month doing research – prices, suppliers, who else was selling the same things within a kilometre – and that was the point at which she began to make progress.
The first three months nearly finished her. She worked from seven in the morning until nine at night and the shop did not make money at all; it lost it, quietly, every week. My mother went in twice a week to do the housework that my sister no longer had any hours for, and once found her asleep standing at the counter.
She made me promise two things. The first was that I would do her a favour and tell our aunt nothing about how bad it was. The second was that if I came to help, I would actually do my best and not simply stand around being encouraging, which is my particular speciality.
So I went in on Saturdays. I did the shopping for stock, I did the washing-up in the tiny room at the back, and I learned to make sure that every item on the shelves faced the same way, because she noticed. Every single time.
Month five was when it turned, and nothing dramatic happened at all. A school two streets away began sending its parents to her, and suddenly there were forty people a day instead of eleven. Her hardest work that year was to make an effort not to expand too quickly, which is exactly the mistake she had watched everybody else make.
Two years on, the shop does business with three other small places on the same street. My sister makes money – not a great deal, but enough – and she has made friends with more or less every customer over sixty in that neighbourhood. My nephew does his homework at the table by the window most afternoons and makes a mess that nobody in the family is permitted to mention.
She still does exercise at six in the morning, because it is the only hour of the day that belongs to her. And when people ask whether all of it was worth it, she repeats what our father said to her that Sunday: that a small shop on a small street cannot change the world, but it can make a difference to one street, and that this is not a smaller thing.
She says now that hesitating for eleven months did more damage than any mistake she has made since.
The rough rule. It is not perfect, but it is right most of the time:
MAKE = create or produce something that did not exist before.
make a cake, make a noise, make a decision, make a mistake, make a plan, make friends
DO = perform an activity, a job or a duty – often something unspecified.
do your homework, do the washing, do a job, do exercise, do nothing, do something
DO is also the verb for anything vague: What are you doing? I did nothing all day. Do something!
Where the rule breaks. Two famous exceptions, and you must simply memorise them:
✓ make the bed (not do the bed)
✓ do the dishes (not make the dishes)
The five mistakes learners actually make. Read these once and you will avoid years of them:
✗ do a mistake → ✓ make a mistake
✗ make my homework → ✓ do my homework
✗ make sport / make exercise → ✓ do exercise, or play football
✗ make a party → ✓ have or throw a party
✗ do money → ✓ make money
How to learn collocations. Never store make and decision as two separate words in your head. Store make a decision as one long word. When you meet a new noun, write down the verb that came with it – that single habit will improve your English more than any grammar book.
MAKE – you produce something: a mistake, a decision, up your mind, progress, friends, an effort, a mess, money, a difference, sure.
DO – you perform an activity: your homework, the shopping, the housework, the washing-up, your best, exercise, business, research, somebody a favour, damage.
The two exceptions: make the bed, do the dishes.
Now test yourself without looking: is it make or do for – the washing, an effort, research, a mess, your best, a difference? Then write one true sentence using three of them.
Now practise with the questions below.
Check your understanding
Answer the questions below. You will see instantly if you are right.
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