Just last week one of my friends asked me to explain the difference to him and I thought the best way to help would be to prepare an episode on the difference between the two. So, here you have it, welcome to today’s podcast on the difference between Do & Make.
By the end of this episode you will understand the following:
- The difference between Make & Do
- Make & Do as collocations
- Make & Do in business expressions
Make
In English, we use Make as a verb that is related to construction, fabrication, planning or production. So, when we use it, we need to try and remember it in this context. For example, “Make arrangements”. To make arrangements means to make plans or to organise something.
Do
Regarding Do, basically, Do is used when talking about performing actions. For example, above we mentioned “Do your homework”. As you can see, this is a task that is being performed.
How to study them
What does this mean for my English? Well, it is really quite simple, you need to learn which words commonly collocate with Make and Do and start to practice them.
How can I learn these collocations? Well, again that is easy. As I have said on many occasions, the first thing to do is read, read, read! The second thing is to start studying Make and Do collocation lists. Let’s take a look at some now.
As I have mentioned in many previous episodes, the best way to learn them is in small groups. You can download a list of common collocations with Make and Do below. In the “cheat sheet”, I have also included a study guide.
From the study guide, you can see that as a strategy, we write down 5 collocations with Make and Do that we wish to memorise and implement in business English every week. We can start to include them in our emails, conversations or presentations. Once we are comfortable using these 5 collocations then we select a further 5 and so on.
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