Charlie Puth and Wiz Khalifa, 2015

 A word of caution: The word damn in the line Damn, who knew? might make this song inappropriate for some student populations.

Choose from the following activities.

• Listening Listen to the song while reading the lyrics. Encourage students to focus on understanding the lyrics of the chorus, which are straightforward and easy to understand. Internet lyrics for this song tend to be accurate.
• Post-Listening Read the poignant story behind the song “See You Again,” titled “The Prediction and the Promise.” It is written at the high-beginning level. Permission is granted to reproduce for classroom use.
• Post-Listening Watch the official music video.
• Post-Listening Draw-Write-Share. Students imagine they haven’t seen their best friend in a year. When they see each other again, what will they tell their friend? They draw pictures of four events that happened in their lives during the past year and write a sentence about each picture. Then they share their drawings and their writing with a partner. (For more on this activity, please see Activity #3: Class Discussion on a Song’s Theme.) Permission is granted to reproduce the worksheet below for classroom use.

see you again wksheet.docx          see you again wksheet.pdf

• Post-Listening Speak the chorus. (For more on this activity, please see Activity #6: Singing or Speaking the Chorus.) Students should draw out the word long when saying it as the singer does when singing it.

It’s been a long day without you, my friend.
And I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again.
We’ve come a long way from where we began.
Oh, I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again.

• Post-Listening Contrast the use of it’s been vs. it was. The song repeats the sentence It’s been a long day without you, my friend three times. Follow up with the worksheet below. Because the activity focuses on just the phrases it’s been vs. it was, it can be successful for levels as low as high beginning. Permission is granted to reproduce for classroom use.

it was vs. it’s been.docx          it was vs. it’s been.pdf

You’ll find another follow-up activity at AzarGrammar.com–the Chapter 4 intermediate-level worksheet submitted by the teachers at Edmonds Community College titled “Past vs. Present Perfect.”

• Post-Listening Read another story with the “see you again” theme. If you use the True Stories reading series, you could follow up with “Old Friends,” about the friendship between a Chinese boy and US soldiers in 1945 and their reunion many years later.
• Post-Listening Read a news release on the VOA site for English language learners. It’s about “See You Again” surpassing “Gangnam Style” in July 2017 as the most-viewed YouTube video. The news release is accompanied by a glossary of new words and an audio recording.