Il faut lui faire attention - French Mistake

Mistakes will always be made in French, and now you can learn from them.

Wrong: Il faut lui faire attention

Right: Il faut faire attention à lui, Il faut y faire attention

Explanation: "To pay attention to" is faire attention à in French. Normally, the preposition à plus a person can be replaced by an indirect object pronoun, but the phrase faire attention à is an exception.* You can't say il faut lui / leur / me faire attention; what you can say depends on whether the object is a person or thing.

People: To say "you have to pay attention to (someone)," you must keep the preposition à and indicate the person with a name, noun, or disjunctive pronoun:

• Il faut faire attention à Paul / à Martine / à Luc et Agnès.
• Il faut faire attention à ton prof / au médecin / à vos parents.
• Il faut faire attention à lui / à moi / à eux.

Things: When saying "you have to pay attention to it," you can use either à plus an indefinite demonstrative pronoun or just the adverbial pronoun y:

• Il faut faire attention à ceci / cela / ça.
• Il faut y faire attention.

*Verbs that don't allow a preceding object pronoun