EnglishBlitz

TOEIC Link Part 5 — make vs do: The Business Collocations You Cannot Reason Your Way Into

Part 5 tests make and do as if meaning decides the answer, but the choice is fixed by collocation, not logic — make a decision and do research follow no rule you can derive. This guide gives the two rough tendencies that help, the high-frequency business pairings TOEIC actually tests, the fixed expressions to memorize, and worked items with the exact distractor logic.

EnglishBlitz Editorial Team·

The board will ____ a decision on the acquisition next week. Both make and do mean roughly "carry out an action," so a candidate reasoning from meaning has no way to choose — and that is exactly the point. The answer is make a decision, and no rule of logic will get you there; English simply pairs make with decision and do with research, and the assignments are largely arbitrary. TOEIC tests make vs do precisely because they cannot be reasoned out. They must be recognized. This guide gives the two weak tendencies that help at the margins, and then the pairings you have to know cold.

Why meaning will not save you

make and do are the two most overworked verbs in English, and their noun partners were fixed by centuries of usage, not by rule. do the dishes but make dinner; do business but make a profit. There is no semantic feature that separates a "make noun" from a "do noun" reliably. That is why this item type rewards memorized collocation over analysis — the same recognition skill tested across verb-preposition collocations, where the correct particle is a lexical fact, not a deducible one. Treat make/do items as vocabulary, not grammar.

The two tendencies (weak, but better than nothing)

When you genuinely do not know a pairing, two rough patterns tilt the odds:

  • make leans toward creating or producing a result — something new comes into existence: make a plan, make an offer, make a profit, make progress, make an arrangement.
  • do leans toward performing an activity or task — often routine, unspecified, or general: do the work, do a task, do research, do business, do a favor.

These are tendencies, not rules — do damage produces a result and make the bed is a routine task, both against the pattern. Use them only as a tiebreaker when memory fails. On a known pairing, the pairing wins.

The business collocations TOEIC actually tests

Part 5 draws from a workplace vocabulary, so the pairings that matter are the office ones. Learn these as fixed units.

make + noun (business):

  • make a decision, make a choice
  • make an appointment, make a reservation
  • make a payment, make a profit
  • make an offer, make a proposal
  • make progress, make an effort
  • make an announcement, make a presentation
  • make a complaint, make a mistake
  • make arrangements, make a contribution

do + noun (business):

  • do business (with a partner/company)
  • do research, do a study, do an analysis
  • do a task, do the work, do a job
  • do a favor, do damage
  • do paperwork, do the accounting
  • do an audit, do a review
  • do overtime

Notice the pairs that are easy to swap by mistake: make a decision (not do a decision), do research (not make research), make a payment (not do a payment), do business (not make business). TOEIC builds distractors from exactly these swaps, so the wrong option is always the "logical-sounding" one.

Fixed expressions worth memorizing outright

A handful of high-frequency idioms show up verbatim and reward rote memory:

  • make sure (= confirm), make sense, make time, make room
  • make the most of, make up for, make do with
  • do without, do one's best, do the trick, do well

make sure the report is finalized and do your best to meet the deadline are common Part 5 frames. Because these are frozen, no tendency applies — recognize or miss. This is the same lexical-recognition demand behind choosing word choice over word form: the item is testing what you have stored, not what you can derive.

Worked items

  1. The finance team needs to ____ a thorough analysis before the merger closes.

    • analysis pairs with do (do an analysis). The make distractor exploits the "produce a result" feel of analysis.

  2. We hope to ____ significant progress on the rollout this quarter.

    • progress pairs with make (make progress). do progress does not exist. The tendency (produce a result) also points to make.

  3. Our company has ____ business with that supplier for over a decade.

    • business pairs with do (do business). make business is a classic wrong option that sounds plausible.

  4. Please ____ a reservation for the client dinner on Thursday.

    • reservation pairs with make (make a reservation). do a reservation is the trap.

The one-question decision

When make and do compete, do not ask which action fits the meaning — that road leads to the distractor every time. Ask instead: do I know this pairing? If yes, answer from the fixed collocation and ignore the logic. If no, fall back on the weak tendency — make for producing a result, do for performing a task — and move on. The only reliable path through this item type is a stocked memory, so treat the business lists above as flashcards: make a decision, do research, make a payment, do business. Recognition, not reasoning, is the whole game.