Make or Do? Six Word Pairs That Trip Up Almost Every English Learner

A student of mine once told me she’d “done a big mistake” in a job interview. Then she stopped, frowned, and corrected herself: “Made a big mistake?” She got it right on the second try. But you could see the confidence drain out of her, and that bothered me way more than the mistake did.

If that’s ever been you, I want you to know two things. First, mixing up words like make and do has nothing to do with how smart you are. These pairs are confusing because in your language, they’re probably one single word. Second, most of them follow patterns you can learn in about ten minutes.

So here are the six pairs my students mix up the most, and how I teach them in class.

Make and do

The short version: you make things that exist afterwards, and you do activities and tasks.

You make dinner, make a plan, make money, make a decision, make a mess. When you’re finished, there’s a result sitting there. The dinner exists. The mess definitely exists.

You do homework, do the dishes, do your job, do exercise. These are just activities. Nothing new gets created; the work simply gets done.

It’s not a perfect rule, and English has some annoying exceptions (why is it “do your hair”? no idea, you just have to accept it). But the create-vs-activity idea covers maybe ninety percent of cases, which is a much better starting point than guessing.

Say and tell

This one has an actual rule, and it works basically every time: tell needs a person immediately after it. Say doesn’t.

She told me the meeting was cancelled.
She said the meeting was cancelled.

Both fine. The one that isn’t fine is “she said me the meeting was cancelled,” which I hear in class every single week. If there’s a person right after the verb, you want tell. If not, say. That’s the whole rule.

Borrow and lend

Here’s why this pair breaks everyone’s brain: both words describe the same event. The only difference is which direction you’re looking at it from.

Borrowing is taking. Lending is giving. So “Can I borrow your pen?” and “Can you lend me your pen?” are the same request wearing different clothes.

When my students get stuck, I tell them to picture a library. You borrow books from the library. The library lends books to you. Nobody has ever walked into a library and lent a book off the shelf. If that mental image sticks, you’ve got it.

And yes, I lent my brother fifty dollars once. Still waiting.

Fun and funny

Careful with this one, because getting it wrong doesn’t just sound off. It changes your meaning.

Fun means you enjoyed something. Funny means it made you laugh. A beach day is fun. A comedian is funny. Simple enough, until someone says “the party was funny” and I have to ask what exactly happened at this party. A clown showed up? Someone fell in the pool?

If you enjoyed it, it was fun. Save funny for things that actually make people laugh.

Remember and remind

Remembering happens inside your own head. Reminding comes from outside.

I can’t remember her name. Nobody’s helping me here; my brain is just failing on its own.

Can you remind me to call the dentist? Now I’m asking for outside help.

The word itself gives you a clue: remind is basically “re-mind,” putting something back into your mind. A song can remind you of your hometown. Your phone can remind you about a meeting. But when you manage it alone, you remember.

Hear and listen

You hear things by accident. You listen on purpose.

Sound reaches your ears whether you want it to or not; that’s hearing. Listening means you chose to pay attention. This is exactly why “I can hear you, but I wasn’t listening” is a perfectly logical sentence, and also why my wife says it to me more often than I’d like to admit.

One more detail: listen almost always needs “to.” You listen to music, listen to a podcast, listen to your teacher. Ideally.

Okay, test yourself

Six questions. Answers at the bottom, and no scrolling ahead.

By the way, if you’d rather have your answers checked for you as you go, there’s an interactive version of this quiz too.

1. Can you ___ me your charger until lunch? (borrow / lend)
2. I need to ___ a decision by Friday. (make / do)
3. She ___ me the train was late. (said / told)
4. That comedian is so ___! (fun / funny)
5. This photo ___ me of our trip to Lisbon. (remembers / reminds)
6. Sorry, I wasn’t ___. What did you say? (hearing / listening)

Answers: lend, make, told, funny, reminds, listening.

If you got five or six, honestly, you probably didn’t need this lesson. Three or four is exactly where most intermediate learners land, so you’re in good company. Under three? Even better, because now you know precisely what to work on, and that’s worth more than a lucky score.

One small thing before you go

Reading about these pairs won’t make them stick. Using them will. So this week, write three sentences about your own life using words from this lesson. Not textbook sentences. Real ones. “I lent my sister my headphones and she lost them” will stay in your memory forever, because it actually happened to you.

If you found this useful, I share quick English tips like this every day on TikTok and Instagram at English in Hand. Come say hi, and feel free to tell me which word pair confuses you the most. I’m collecting ideas for the next lesson.