Learn English – the difference between “nevermind” and “never mind”

I would suggest that 'frighten' is more intense than 'scare'. Although they are (very) similar, being scared is less serious than being frightened. That is definitely a second-order effect though; to a first approximation, they are (almost) equivalent.

This is a hard question, and there is a lot of idiom involved.

The cases where you can be reasonably sure that "make" is right is

• when you are creating something: "make a salad", "make a home", "make a mess", "make a film".
• when you are causing somebody or something to do something: "make somebody listen", "make him stop", "make the book stay open"
• when you are causing somebody or something to be a certain way: "make him late", "made me happy".

"Do" tends to be more general, and tends not to be used in the cases above (and is rarely used with a direct object except for a word like "job" or "task" - but see below).

"Do" is also used as "pro-verb" in questions and replies, standing for almost all verbs, including "make": "What did you do?" "I made a cake".

But there are many idiomatic cases which are not obviously predictable. We "do" the shopping, the washing ("do the laundry" in the US, I believe), the dishes, the windows (i.e. clean them), our homework, our tax return; but we "make" the bed (i.e. arrange the bedding neatly).