German speakers often have trouble determining when to use "to do" and when to use "to make", as a single verb is used for both these meanings in German (and Spanish, Portuguese and I'm sure many other languages). Since these verbs are so common and used in many contexts, there's no reliable usage rule that I can discern. I'll therefore call specific examples of misuse that I hear regularly.
Today, I'd like to talk about "making" an experience, as in "I have made good experiences with that approach in the past." This use of "to make" is wrong! One "has" (to have) experiences. The example sentence should have read "I have had good experiences with that approach in the past." I hope you have had a good experience with this post!
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Actually, I think German has two words for "to do" (perhaps three if I am to believe LEO): machen and tun (and ausfuehren). I think the confusion come from the fact that machen also means "to make." Indeed, with a little (or perhaps a lot) of imagination, you can see that machen and tun are the German conjugates of make and do. The way it was explained to me was that machen is more creative and tun is more passive. But, in English one could "do" something that ends up in creation. As a native English-speaker, I was naturally disappointed to learn that our language is poorer in this respect. Don't people always say that English has the capacity to be so precise because it has such a huge vocabulary? I was lied to! (Another example of something one "can't" say in English because of the hanging preposition but can say in German.)
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