Hello and welcome to this video about verb and noun collocations and common learner errors! We will be focusing mainly on “make” and “do”, with a few other common examples that you can learn by heart.


So, let’s start things off with two of the most problematic verbs in the English language: make and do.

Now, the problem is is that in German, you have the word machen. And this word is generally used for a lot of things in German without any signs of any differences. For example, in German: Man kann einen Fehler machen, und man kann eine Aufgabe machen. In English, there is a difference between these two: you make a mistake, but you do a task.


Let’s look at “make” in more detail…

When we talk about making something, we are talking about things that we produce or create ourselves. It can also refer to actions that we actually choose to do.

For example, as previously mentioned, we can make a mistake. 

We can also make progress.

And we can make friends.

Although these are just a very small number of examples, you can see that these are things that we create ourselves, such as a mistake, or are part of an action that we choose to do, such as making friends with somebody.


OK, now let’s move onto “do”.

When we use “do”, we are talking about actions or repetitive tasks – that is, things that we do over and over again. “Do” is also used for obligations which refers to things that we have to do (even if we don’t want to…). Let’s look at a few examples…

We can do our homework.

We can do a task in general.

And we can do an experiment.

Here, we see things that are repetitive tasks or obligations, such as homework.

You might think – well, why don’t we say “make an experiment”? Well, remember that “make” focuses more on producing and creating things, whereas “do” focuses on the action itself. So we do an experiment, and at the end we might make a discovery (i.e. the thing that is produced).


Let’s look at some further examples that sometimes catch learners of English out.

In German: Man macht ein Foto. But do we “make” a photo in English? You can probably tell already that the answer is “no”! So what do we say?

We take a photo in English (we don’t make one!).

Because of this, you might actually find that English speakers who are learning German often say: “Ich nehme ein Foto” – tricky collocations work both ways!


What about the verb “say”?

Do you say a comment?

Do you say an example?

Do you say a joke?

And do you say a lie?

Well, you probably guessed right – the answer is “no” in each situation. So what do we say instead of “say”?

Let’s start with “comment”…

Do you know how we would phrase it?

We make a comment in English. In fact, in German: man macht ein Kommentar. So that one is easy!

So what about an example?

We give an example in English. We don’t “say” an example.

And what about a joke?

In English, we tell a joke – we don’t “say” a joke.

And actually, that applies to “lie”, too. We tell a lie, we don’t say lies.


So those were just a handful of examples of collocations in English. Just like in many languages, the list goes on and on…

Here are some more examples. Feel free to take a screenshot or pause the video to write them down.

You will probably start to notice that there aren’t many rules when it comes to collocations. It’s all about learning them by heart.


And that’s why it’s important to remember these things when learning vocabulary:

Firstly: When you learn a new word, try to learn collocations that go with it.

For example, if you learn the phrase “out of business” which means that a company has gone bankrupt, we say that a company goes out of business (not something like “becomes” or “gets” out of business).

And if you learn the word “effort”, you should learn with it that we say “to make an effort” which means that somebody tries their best.

The list of collocations can be daunting, but remember: focus on vocabulary and collocations that are relevant to you and the area you speak English in. There is no point worrying about certain phrases that you are never going to use. Make a list of words that come up often in conversations in your classes or in texts that you read, and then look up common collocations that go with them.


So, that’s all about collocations for now. Why not continue this section by doing the quiz to test your knowledge?

Thanks for watching!