I know how much you've got on at the moment and thinking about getting ahead on Language Change (which we will be starting before Christmas) is probably the last thing on your mind... But watching period dramas and keeping an eye on how the values of the time are represnted in the language choices is a fun thing to do (honest!).
If you've got Netflix (or right now it is available on YouTube but I'm sure it will get taken down soon), watch the pre-title opening sequence of The Crown episode 2 and look at how the princess's heightened RP (overt prestige) and colonial values make her speech a product of its era. Look at Philip's (lack of) respect for cultural diversity in the noun choice of "hat" and think about what has and has not changed in terms of their language use over time.
Keep notes on attitudes towards key issues like race, sexuality, religion etc. in any time period you happen to be watching drama set in or reading novels set in. Getting a sense of what characterised different decades and key periods e.g. the world wars, the English renaissance (which marks the start of our time period within which one of your exam texts will come from: 1600-the recent past), the decline of colonial Britain, the rise of the internet - these are all pulled out of a hat; there is no indication that the text on the exam paper will be linked to any of these contexts so a general historical awareness is super-super-helpful to get context marks, but don't despair! Any historical perspecitves you get from doing wider reading for this will make you a more critically aware human being, so it's all useful.
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