The use of Make or do needs to be further discussed not just along the lines of Make being used for more concrete explains or by explaining that do is used more for abstract choices. Make can be used for taking a decision where Make substitutes for made.
Then there is also the overlap between taking lunch and making lunch. When somebody wants to improve the quality of their lives, then they can Make a better person out of himself or herself and so Make there refers to improvement. Make has the opposite connotation when making a fool of oneself or making an ass of oneself. So making a fool of oneself does not mean he is bettering his life, it means that what he has done is absurd or has caused embarrassment. Making an ass would also infer getting embarrassed because of something said or done.
Make also precedes "an issue" as in making an issue of something. In the expression "you"re making an issue out of nothing', the person is exaggerating. Here too one is not constructing something as he does in the real sense, one is creating something "mentally". This expression is close in meaning to "making a mountain out of a molehill". First of all, new learners will want to know what molehills are. They are those little mounds so common to English gardens build by small mammals that dig tunnels, called moles. The mounds are tiny and that is the reason for the comparison to larger real hills.
When Make is followed by a personal pronoun the sense of construction falls short. If the person says "Make me an offer", the person making the statement is looking for a business agreement usually to be concluded with a payment in exchange for a service or an exchange of services.
If a person says "she Makes me sick" one is not referring to an actual illness but that the person saying this dislikes what the other person says or does to a great extent. There might be a realistic interpretation and that is some one might actually cause the person to lose his health and so Make him sick, but the meaning is usually figurative.
Make followed by prepositions opens up another can of worms. Change the preposition and one changes the meaning of Make.' Make up for lost time' means that the person has to find a means to compensate for lost time spent doing an activity.
"Making up" used by itself can refer to someone wanting to apologize for what they have done as it can also refer to someone doing an exam to substitute for a grade he did not do well in. In the case of a quarrel which has been resolved then, a couple "Makes up" and in the case of a "Make up exam", a noun phrase, the exam grade for the substituted exam will be used to take the place of the old one. "Make up" written as a hyphenated word or a one "Makeup", can also be considered a noun without any words added. All one has to do is see the advertisements for Makeup on the media to know that this is what is put on the face when one wants to look attractive.
Change the preposition from up to out and one has something that a couple might do in public or private if they like each other. It usually involves a display of affection of one for another. But "making out a word" on the other hand would be being able to understand what the written word is supposed to be. Making out a check to somebody would have nothing to do with understanding someone's handwriting as it would mean writing a check payable to somebody else for a purchase or service. Changing the preposition again to "of" means one is talking about the materials from which a garment is made. So something made of cotton refers to the article consisting of cotton fabric.
For the foreign student coming from Italy or France, there may be similar uses of the equivalent verb but the learner is encouraged not to translate into his language. If it is unavoidable to see where the similarities are or the person sees that another verb is used and not Make, then the learner should use that knowledge to get the person to practice using that expression in English.
