Some students insist it isa ll the same. Teachers have to lay down some guidelines otherwise language learning would be all over the place. Make is generally used with constructing and do is used with more figurative forms and activities where the final product isn't the creation of something else.
For example you make your bed because you are arranging elemnetns so that the mattress, sheet, blanket and cover are all arranged differently. The final product is a new creation as it were and that is why make is used. We do our hom work on the other hand because it is an activity if there is anything created it is the act of doing something but there is no physical change in the final product. Students may argue that a completed notebook is proof of a physical change.
Then I would go onto something more tangible like you make a sandcastle out of sand or a house out of bricks but homework is not made of physical materials other than your transcription of information from book to notebook page. Students may argue that this is not how it done in their language or that the English language is being too specific here. it is not your place to enter into an arguement about how the language was created or compromise your teaching to satisfy the client. Similar difficulties occur between the use of get and go when they are both used for locomotion and the movement from one point to the next.
The success of get is that is also used for expressions like understanding something or to acquire something (see Idiomatic Expression I) but go has become more widely used for expressions the intention of doing something as well as just moving about. That is off course when it is placed in the gerund form before an infinitive which might be itself as well like "he is going to go".Go is used in front of a variety of infinitives like up and down to refer to a literal sense of rising or descending. There is a figurative sense which comes with phrasal verbs, so to go up or down 100 pounds in a week means the person has gained or lost that amount of weight in that period of time. when asked what rising and falling has o do with weight gain or loss, I would just say think of weight like a number which rises and falls.
