Hello and welcome to this podcast brought to you by That’s English! The Spanish Ministry of Education’s official distance learning English course. To find out more about That’s English! go to www.thatsenglish.com or contact your local Official School of Languages. One set of confusing verbs for Spanish learners of English is make and do. The confusion lies in the fact that in the Spanish language there is just the one verb to mean both, hacer, but in English we have make and do. So, what is the difference between make and do? As a general rule, we use make for activities that involve manual work, and do for all the others. Let’s look at some examples using do: We say: Do a course, do a report, do a great job, do business. Do homework, do experiments, do research. As these are relating to work, the verb used tends to be do. Other tasks that use do are when we are referring to household chores: Do housework, do the ironing, do the dishes, do the shopping, do the cleaning etc. Do is also frequently used for some sporting activities like: Do exercise, do Pilates and do gymnastics. So, when do we use the verb make, then? If we are talking about something that we produce or create, then the verb make is generally the verb we use. Let’s take a look at some examples, to understand this a bit better: We make breakfast, make lunch and make dinner. (We are producing something when we cook or prepare food, so we use make in this context, although some English speakers also use do in this case.) Make a profit, make a fortune, make money. You can make a choice, make a mistake, make an excuse, and make an effort. You can also make plans, make a reservation, and make a complaint. While we have looked at the basic difference here between make and do, as you can tell, it is not that easy, as there are too many exceptions to the rule. Our advice is to memorise lists for each verb. And, as you know, practice makes perfect! You can group them into smaller lists per topic to make learning them easier - like those relating to business or housework, for example. Please visit our blog post on make and do to see these lists and their Spanish translation. Thanks for listening! We hope you have enjoyed this podcast, brought to you by That's English! Please follow us on social media. We look forward to hearing from you. Bye for now!