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These are Aitchison’s descriptions of 3 different prescriptivist attitudes to language change:

• The Crumbling Castle view holds that the English Language is like a beautiful stately home that should be preserved.
•       (Problem = change is constant, so when was this perfect castle in existence?)
• The Damp Spoon Syndrome believer feels that new forms arise from sheer laziness, like dipping a damp spoon back into the sugar.
•      (Problem = only truly lazy speech is drunken speech when muscles aren’t fully functional.)
• The Infectious Disease assumption suggests that changes in language are somehow contagious; that we ‘pick up’ new words and phrases.
•      (Problem = people adopt new words/forms of speech because they like them.)

Descriptivists like Aitchison herself view language change as natural.  Language evolves and adapts - new forms come in, some drop out, while others remain.

Some contemporary prescriptivists include:

• Lynne Truss with her ‘zero tolerance’ approach to punctuation
• John Humphrys, who believes that English is becoming ‘obese’ with too many words
• Prince Charles, stating that Americans ‘make words that shouldn’t be’ and are therefore ruining the English language

If you don’t have material about these people from lessons, looking them up in relation to language change would be a very productive revision activity.