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Make or Do


Make or Do?

With much of the other grammar difficulties falling like flies, how about an explanation for make and do? The native speaker again has an innate sense of the usage, so once again, in distrust of perfection, without a safety mechanism of some sort, there must be a trick. And it is not as if the choice is deliberate. Only when we compare English to other languages do we see that this separate choice of verbs may be covered by one global solution, for example, Fazer in Portuguese or Hacer in Spanish, which presents one hell of a headache for the poor learner from such cultural comparisons.
Now some teachers and teaching methods like to explain the essential difference with arguments like opposing poles of creative actions (make) against the routine ones or even boring ones (do) as the road to success; nevertheless, even with a certain truth to these arguments, I don’t find the argument a conclusive one because this still requires us to think which is right than to simply know. 
The real secret of how anyone assimilates a language, to be able to use it instinctively, without error, comes from exact positioning of the syntax itself. When we simulate words for the first time we try to identify, through production, a mirrored meaning, thus being able to repeat the message, at least, that is the way the brain must deal with it. Creativity does induce a higher movement which corresponds to make, while the tedious tasks of routine actions fall, just like the factual do. To test the idea, I drew up a map of the mouth to see if theory bears out in practice. What results from charting expression comes down to the pure distribution of words within the mouth.

As we can see from our chart of the pronunciation of make and do, the basis for solving the enigma comes from the pronunciation of each. The way the mouth closes is the real key. What we find is that both verbs are close to the central mouth position but while the jaw closes upwards, pushing the verb make upwards, the opposite occurs with the verb do. Logically the two verbs sweep up the complimentary ideas in their paths, with a certain crossover or overlap in the central region. This crossover allows us to see why we can say both to do time (in prison) and make time (in our busy schedule) and, furthermore, understand that each expression carries a completely different direction and therefore meaning.

Again we find that without good pronunciation, we may well create the wrong paths when we learn a new language. This will not only impede the communication process by sending out all the wrong signals but also send the wrong ones to our own brains. No wonder some people have so much trouble learning languages. But really, all we need is a few signposts to show us the way.

Coming back to make and do, we can obviously check further that the translations of the expressions formed by make and do are also mirrored in the students’ languages.
 

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