Use of Make and Do

Some students insist it is all the same. Teachers have to lay down some guidelines otherwise language learning would be all over the place. Make is generally used with constructing and do is used with more figurative forms and activities where the final product isn’t the creation of something else.

For example you make your bed because you are arranging elements so that the mattress, sheet, blanket and cover are all arranged differently. The final product is a new creation as it were and that is why make is used. We do our homework on the other hand because it is an activity if there is anything created it is the act of doing something but there is no physical change in the final product. Students may argue that a completed notebook is proof of a physical change.

Then I would go onto something more tangible like you make a sandcastle out of sand or a house out of bricks but homework is not made of physical materials other than your transcription of information from book to notebook page. Students may argue that this is not how it done in their language or that the English language is being too specific here. it is not your place to enter into an argument about how the language was created or compromise your teaching to satisfy the client. Similar difficulties occur between the use of get and go when they are both used for locomotion and the movement from one point to the next.