Make or Do? | English Language: Grammar

Make or Do? In today’s free English lesson, you will understand how and when to use "make" and "do" for phrasal verbs. We hope this makes things easier for you! Learn more about our English Language Programs http://www.solex.edu/en/programs.

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TRANSCRIPT: Hi, I’m Jeff, and I’m a teacher at Solex College. I teach English here in Chicago, and just the other day, a student came up to me. Her name is Anna. She’s from Kazakhstan. She’s also our videographer right now. She came to me and she made a comment. She said, “Jeff, I have a grammar point that just doesn’t
make sense to me, and I need you to do me a favor. Now, a favor is an activity that someone does to help someone out. Now, I’m a pretty busy man. I was sitting there doing some work . I was like, “What kind of a favor does Anna want me to do for her? Does she want me to do her laundry? Does she want me to do her dishes? Does she want me to do her homework?” So I had to make a decision. Was I going to help her? I had to make a choice. Was I going to be a good guy, or a bad guy? So I decided to be a
good guy. So I asked her, “What kind of a favor do you want me to do for you?” And she said that she couldn’t make sense of when to use make and do. She wanted me to do a lesson about make and do. So I said, “Okay.” So I made a plan and here I am.

The thing I want to really tell you about make and do is that it’s really, really very simple. There is one major rule about make and do. We do activities and we make things, and if you can remember this, you won’t make any mistakes.

First of all, activities are things that are kind of like work. They can be fun things to do, kind of like dancing, when you do a dance. Or it can be some boring piece of work that you have to do like doing the laundry. Now, many students kind of get a little bit confused. “Okay, I’m doing the laundry, I’m doing this activity, but aren’t I making the laundry clean?” In way, when you think about make, you think make means create, make means produce . Are you making new clothes? No. you are doing the laundry to make sure those clothes are clean. I am wearing the clothes that I put on this morning, they will get dirty, I will wash them, I will do the laundry and I will have the same clothes that I started with. When you’re thinking about make, you’re making things that did not exist before. Make a comment. A comment is something that we speak. A comment is speaking about something. Before the comment, there was nothing but silence. So you make a comment. Now, we also make mistakes. This is another one that students are like, “Woah, woah, wait, wait, just wait a second, I did the mistake. Actually, a mistake is not an activity. A mistake is a product, it is something that you make that was not there before. So, you’re doing your homework, writing it out, boom, you’ve made a mistake. It wasn’t there before, and it’s there now. Simply put, do is for activities like work or jobs. Make is for production, for creation. Alright, you didn’t create yoga, you do yoga, it’s been around forever, you do the activity. You make a mess, that mess wasn’t there before, you did it, you just made it.

So there you go. I hope this helps you out. Make sure to like us on Youtube. Solex College Chicago.

Thanks a lot.

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Видео Make or Do? | English Language: Grammar канала Learn English with Solexian