Bare Infinitive After Make, Let, and Perception Verbs
5 exercises — practise the bare infinitive after causative "make"/"let" versus to-infinitives after "force"/"get".
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Choose the sentence with the correct bare infinitive after "make".
"The misconfigured retry logic made the client resend the request five times" is correct: causative "make" is followed by object + bare infinitive (no "to"), so "resend" is correct. Option B incorrectly adds "to", which "make" in the causative sense does not take in active voice. Option C incorrectly uses the gerund "resending" instead of the bare infinitive. Option D incorrectly uses the past tense "resent" instead of the base form required after "make + object".
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "let" with a bare infinitive?
"The feature flag lets admins bypass the rate limiter" is correct: "let" takes object + bare infinitive, so "bypass" without "to" is correct. Option B incorrectly adds "to" after "let", which is ungrammatical. Option C incorrectly uses the gerund "bypassing". Option D incorrectly uses the past tense "bypassed" instead of the base form.
3 / 5
Select the sentence that correctly contrasts "make" (bare infinitive) with "force" (to-infinitive).
"The outage made the team scramble, and it forced management to reassess the on-call rotation" is correct: "make" takes a bare infinitive ("scramble"), while "force" requires a to-infinitive ("to reassess"), unlike "make". Option B incorrectly adds "to" after "made" and omits it after "forced", reversing both patterns. Option C correctly handles "make" but incorrectly omits "to" after "forced". Option D incorrectly adds "to" after "made", though it correctly keeps "to" after "forced".
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses a perception verb with a bare infinitive to describe a completed observed action?
"The monitoring dashboard let the team see the pod restart automatically" is correct: "see" as a perception verb takes object + bare infinitive when describing the whole completed action, and "let" also takes a bare infinitive ("see"), both patterns correctly applied. Option B incorrectly adds "to" before "restart" after the perception verb "see". Option C uses the gerund "restarting", which would instead emphasize the action in progress rather than viewing it as a complete event; that is a valid but different pattern than the one being tested. Option D incorrectly uses the gerund "seeing" after "let", which requires a bare infinitive, not a gerund.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly contrasts "get" (to-infinitive) with "make" (bare infinitive) in a code review scenario?
"The reviewer got the author to add tests, which made the pipeline pass on the next run" is correct: "get" (in the sense of persuading/causing someone to do something) requires a to-infinitive ("to add"), while "make" requires a bare infinitive ("pass"), and both are applied correctly here. Option B omits "to" after "got" and incorrectly adds it after "made", reversing both patterns. Option C correctly keeps "to" after "got" but incorrectly adds "to" after "made" as well. Option D incorrectly omits "to" after "got", though it correctly uses a bare infinitive after "made".