Hi Jamie, When looking for examples on the Internet I came upon an answer from our 'Italki' colleague 'Domi from Germany' which I find very instructive. Please have a look at: http://www.italki.com/question/39998 Kind regards, Georg

Domi lists a lot of great examples of idiomatic expressions. And like he said, they're often interchangeable in sentences like "Was machst/tust du heute?" or "Ich habe das schon gemacht/getan." I just wanted to add that I've found that "tun" is used a lot more commonly in Bavaria and Austria than the rest of Germany. There are lots of words that are completely correct, but vary by region. If you're interested in a specific region in Germany, you can choose based on that.