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A2 · Elementary

A2 English Collocations: Make, Do, Get and Have

A2 is where collocation stops being a curiosity and starts being the thing that separates correct English from natural English. The reason is one specific problem: make and do divide a large set of fixed phrases between them, and no rule tells you which gets which.

30 collocationsReal example sentencesLinked to the word listsA2 level

Written and reviewed by Vugar Novruzov, Academy Director · How we write our lessons

What changes at A2

By A2 you have enough vocabulary that word choice becomes possible, and with choice comes the chance to choose wrongly. A beginner who says I go to school has no alternative to get wrong. An elementary learner who wants to say they made a mistake has four verbs available and only one that English accepts.

Our A2 vocabulary hub puts it plainly: this is the level where collocation starts to matter more than the individual word, and where a word with three partners attached becomes a word you can actually use. The groups below are the partnerships that carry elementary English, each shown in the example sentence the site already publishes for it.

do + activity and work

Do takes activities, work and unspecified tasks — the things you perform rather than create. Our A2 core verbs lesson works through the whole split in detail.

get + change of state

The most elastic verb in elementary English. Get means become, receive or arrive depending on what follows, and each of those senses has its own set of partners.

have + experience or event

At A2, have stops meaning possession and starts meaning experiencing something for a period. This is the group that lets you talk about your day rather than your belongings.

have + illness and symptom

English uses have for almost every ailment, where many languages use a verb closer to be or feel. Learn the whole set together — it comes up at the doctor and nowhere else.

give + noun

Give collocates with things handed over literally and with things handed over figuratively — a present, a refund, a smile, knowledge.

go + activity

The go + -ing pattern covers most leisure activities, and go to covers most places and events. Both are fixed and neither is negotiable.

cause + problem

The first genuinely abstract collocation most learners meet: an inanimate thing causing a bad outcome. It is the seed of the far larger B2 set built on the same verb.

What to watch out for

Where these examples come from

Every sentence above is the example already published for that word on our A2 vocabulary lists — the same sentence you will see if you follow the link under it. Nothing on this page was written to demonstrate a collocation; the collocations were selected from what the site already teaches, which is why each one can be followed straight to a full word list with a definition, British pronunciation and flashcards.

That constraint is deliberate. A collocation page built from invented examples would be a second vocabulary set competing with the first, and a learner who met do research here would have nowhere to go next. Built this way, the 30 pairings on this page are 30 doors into the elementary word lists.

Questions about A2 collocations

What is the difference between make and do?

Make tends towards creating or causing something and do towards performing an activity, but there are enough exceptions that memorising the common pairs is faster than applying the principle. Our A2 core verbs lesson lists both sets in full with a quiz.

Why is it “make a mistake” and not “do a mistake”?

Collocation, not logic. A mistake is not obviously something you create, and yet make is what English uses. This is precisely why the pairs have to be collected rather than derived.

How do I record collocations so they stick?

Write the whole phrase in your notebook, not the single word — have a meeting, not meeting. When you meet the same word with a second partner, add it underneath. A word with three partners attached is a word you can use; a word on its own is a word you can recognise.

Are collocations the same as phrasal verbs?

No, though they overlap. A phrasal verb is a verb plus a particle that together mean something new — give up is not about giving. A collocation is two ordinary words that habitually co-occur while keeping their meanings. Our A2 phrasal verbs list covers the other set.

Should I learn collocations or more vocabulary?

At A2, both, but weighted towards partners. A learner with 1,000 words and their common partners communicates far more comfortably than one with 2,000 bare words, because bare words have to be assembled and pairs are simply retrieved.

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