The text I picked was “You Can Learn to Write in General” by Elizabeth Wardle, the bad idea mentioned was that one can write in general. What is meant by this is that there a way someone can write that doesn’t go towards an audience or purpose. Also meaning that there is a format that can be applied to every essay, report paper, and journal.
The author says this is a bad idea because this makes writers and students underestimate how hard writing actually is. This is also a bad idea because like the text mention writing a paper for each subject is different because the context in which the teacher wants it is different. The text also used examples as a person writes in a personal journal differently than when writing a report paper for work. It is different because language might be more formal than another and the audience in which you are writing is very different.
The reason why I picked this piece was that I thought I would learn a good basic tip that I could use for all the writing do. I quickly learned that the piece was explaining why it is not possible and why it can be harmful to think that there is. Tips that the text gave that can help combat this are to be open to learning new writing techniques and understand that not all writing is the same. Another tip the piece gave way to get examples of what you are going to write before writing, to be able to see the difference than in other writing. This is something that I always like to do that I didn’t realize was apart of making on how to write for specific things. When the teacher or professor would assign me a new writing assignment format that I have never done before, I would always ask for examples to be clear on how the writing should be. A good idea that would counteract this idea would be to make sure to think and the purpose and audience for the writing and compare to your different writing assignments.

The topic I will be writing about for the Unit 2 essay is gentrification, but specifically in my neighborhood. My neighborhood is the Lower East Side, I have lived here my whole life and although I already know gentrification was happening in this neighborhood, over the past few years it has gotten worse. I think this topic is a continuation of gentrification because in my Unit 1 essay I talked about how Bodegas have become gentrified and now I want to speak on how my neighborhood has become gentrified. Although the broad topic didn’t switch my discourse community changed from just Dominicans to everyone who lives in the Lower East Side. This is an important problem to my discourse community because it is becoming harder to live on the Lower East Side and we are being forced to leave due to rent.