영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Many teachers and parents worry that today's teenagers are losing the ability ①to read long, complex texts. National test scores show a slow decline in reading comprehension over the past ten years, and some experts blame smartphones and short videos for ②shortening students' attention spans. Other researchers disagree with this simple explanation. They point out that teenagers today ③read constantly, just in different forms, such as text messages, captions, and online articles. According to this view, the real problem is not that students read less overall, but that they rarely practice reading long passages without any interruption. A team of researchers recently found that students ④who read at least one full book every month scored noticeably higher on comprehension tests than students who mainly read short online posts. This result suggests that the format of reading, rather than simple screen time, may ⑤being the more important factor behind the changing scores.

Attention, students! Our school festival ①are going green this year, and we truly need your help. This event aims to reduce the disposable waste ②that usually piles up during the celebration. First, please bring your own cup, plate, and utensils to every food booth you visit. Second, each booth should use reusable decorations rather than paper banners ③that get thrown away within hours. Students ④who join as Green Helpers will manage the recycling stations, sorting cans, bottles, and paper carefully all day long. Therefore, everyone's small cooperation will directly lower the amount of trash sent to the landfill. However, single-use plastic bags are strictly prohibited at every booth this year. If your booth needs supplies, please contact the student council office before Friday. Let us work together to create a festival ⑤that is both fun and eco-friendly.

For many students, the walk to school feels so routine that safety becomes an afterthought, yet a surprising number of accidents ①occur within a few blocks of the school gate. Part of the danger comes from convenience: students often cut across a busy street rather than walking the extra minute to the nearest crosswalk, ②assuming they can judge the traffic gap correctly. This shortcut becomes especially risky during the darker months, when a driver's ability to spot a pedestrian ③drop sharply well before sunrise or after sunset. Traffic safety officials argue that these small habits, ④repeated daily, do more to prevent injury than any single safety campaign ever ⑤could.

For my birthday, my older sister took me to a small pottery studio where visitors can shape their own bowl or cup on a spinning wheel. I expected the wheel to do most of the difficult work ①automatically, since it was already spinning quickly by the time I sat down. My first attempt collapsed into a shapeless lump within seconds, because I had not realized how much steady, centered pressure the clay actually requires before it can be shaped at all. The instructor explained that beginners almost always press too ②hard on one side, which throws the entire piece off balance no matter how fast or slow the wheel spins. After nearly a dozen failed attempts, I finally produced a lopsided but recognizable cup, and the small imperfection along its rim somehow made me ③ashamed of it, unlike a perfectly smooth, machine-made mug. Clay, I learned that afternoon, rewards ④patience far more generously than it rewards ⑤force.

Last summer, our neighborhood association invited students to help paint a mural on the long wall beside the community center, and nearly forty volunteers with completely different painting abilities showed up on the first day. I worried that combining so many different skill levels would create an ①ugly, mismatched result, since some volunteers had painted for years while others, including me, had never held a large brush before. The project leader solved this by dividing the huge design into small, connected sections and assigning each volunteer a section matched to their ②comfort level, from simple solid-color backgrounds to detailed flowers. Beginners filled in wide open skies, while experienced painters added fine details like veins on leaves or shadows under birds. When the plastic sheets finally came down, the mural looked remarkably ③unified, not despite the many different hands involved, but because each hand had been given a task ④unrelated to what it could do well, which made the ⑤collaboration feel effortless in the end.

Students who read many books across many different subjects often develop a habit that quieter learners sometimes ①lack: the habit of comparing new information with what they already know. A student who has read about ancient wars, ocean ecosystems, and modern economics can more easily ②notice when two different subjects share a similar pattern. This kind of connection-making is closely related to what psychologists call critical thinking, since seeing a familiar pattern in an unfamiliar topic allows a person to ask ③sharper questions instead of accepting new information at face value. Extensive reading also builds a large mental library of examples, which makes it ④harder to evaluate whether a new claim sounds reasonable or exaggerated. Teachers often notice that widely read students argue more carefully, supporting their opinions with ⑤specific examples rather than vague generalizations.

Whenever someone learns that I spend hours drawing comics that almost nobody else ever sees, they usually ask why I bother, since the work will never be published or praised by a large audience. For a long time, I struggled to answer that question honestly, assuming that art only counted as worthwhile once other people recognized it. Watching my younger brother build enormous, pointless block towers purely for the joy of knocking them down, though, helped me understand something I had been missing. He never once asked whether his tower was good; he simply needed to build the version of it that existed in his head before he could feel satisfied. Creating something, I now believe, often serves the creator first, giving shape to a feeling or idea that would otherwise stay vague and unexpressed. _______________.

My grandmother keeps a wooden cabinet filled with tiny furniture, each piece no larger than a fingernail, that she has been building for over a decade as a miniature hobby. When I first saw the cabinet, I assumed the appeal was simply how impressively small and precise the pieces looked. Talking with her while she worked, though, I learned that _______________. She once spent three weekends carving a single tiny bookshelf, only to leave two of its shelves deliberately empty, explaining that a completely full room would look staged rather than lived-in. That small decision taught me that miniature craft is not primarily about precision, but about convincingly imagining an ordinary life small enough to fit inside a shoebox.

Riding a bicycle is one of the most popular ways for teenagers to get around, yet many students still skip the one piece of equipment that could save their life: the helmet. (A) Wearing a helmet does not prevent a fall, but it dramatically reduces the chance of a serious head injury when one occurs. (B) A sudden pothole, a car door opening without warning, or a patch of gravel can throw even an experienced cyclist off balance in an instant. (C) Some argue that a short trip to a nearby store does not require any special protection, since the risk feels distant and unlikely, but most accidents actually happen close to home, on familiar streets where riders feel too comfortable to expect danger.

These emotions do not belong to any single era; they belong to being human. Students often groan when a classic novel appears on their reading list, complaining that the language feels old-fashioned and the plot moves too slowly. ( ① ) It is true that classic literature can be harder to read than a modern bestseller written in casual, everyday language. ( ② ) Yet this very difficulty is part of why classics remain valuable for young readers today. ( ③ ) Working through unfamiliar sentence patterns and vocabulary trains the brain to handle complex texts, a skill that transfers directly to other subjects and to standardized tests. ( ④ ) Beyond language training, classic novels also explore themes such as jealousy, ambition, and loss that have not changed much across centuries. ( ⑤ ) Readers often discover that a character written hundreds of years ago struggles with feelings that still feel familiar today, and for these reasons, many teachers argue that classics deserve a place on every reading list, not because they are old, but because they are still relevant.