영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Until last spring, Minji rarely thought twice about ①tossing a paper cup into the trash after finishing her coffee. Environmental issues seemed distant, something scientists and politicians should handle rather than an ordinary student like her. That changed when her class was assigned a documentary about plastic waste drifting through the ocean, footage she initially ②expected finding boring. Instead, watching seabirds mistake plastic fragments for food ③left her strangely unsettled, and she found herself thinking about the assignment long after class ended. The next morning, almost without deciding to, she ④slipped her old tumbler into her backpack instead of buying a disposable cup on the way to school. It felt like a small, meaningless gesture at first. However, as weeks passed, she realized that consistently choosing the tumbler, ⑤declining a plastic straw, and reusing a shopping bag were quietly adding up. Small choices, she discovered, become meaningful once repeated.

Across many countries, high schools ①begins classes early in the morning, often before eight o'clock. This schedule assumes that teenagers can simply go to bed earlier to compensate, but biology tells a different story. During adolescence, the body's internal clock shifts later, ②delaying the release of melatonin until well after ten at night. As a result, most teenagers are not physiologically ready to fall asleep until much later than younger children or adults. When early start times force them ③to wake before their bodies have completed a full sleep cycle, the mismatch accumulates into a chronic sleep debt ④that affects concentration and mood throughout the school day. Researchers who study this mismatch argue that the underlying problem is not laziness or poor discipline among students, but a scheduling system ⑤built around adult rhythms rather than adolescent ones.

Secondhand trading platforms, once considered a niche market for used goods, have grown into a mainstream part of consumer culture. Rising prices for new products, combined with growing awareness of environmental waste, have encouraged many shoppers to consider used items before purchasing something brand new. These platforms allow individuals to sell clothing, electronics, and furniture directly to other consumers, cutting out traditional retail markups entirely. For younger buyers especially, purchasing secondhand items has become associated with resourcefulness rather than financial necessity, ①change how such purchases are perceived socially. To ②address this problem, many platforms now ③offer buyer protection programs and detailed rating systems for sellers. As trust in these systems continues to grow, secondhand trading is ④expected to ⑤expand even further in the coming years.

Sociologist Mark Granovetter introduced an idea that seems ①contradictory at first glance, known as the strength of weak ties. According to this theory, people who see each other only ②occasionally, called weak ties, often provide more valuable information than close friends or family members, who are considered strong ties. This happens because strong ties tend to share the same social circles and, therefore, already possess ③similar knowledge. Weak ties, in contrast, move within different networks, which allows them to introduce ideas or opportunities that would otherwise remain unknown. For example, a former classmate rarely contacted might mention a job opening unavailable through one's immediate circle. Social media platforms have made maintaining such connections remarkably ④harder, letting users keep hundreds of loose acquaintances active without frequent face-to-face meetings. Consequently, these platforms function as efficient channels through which weak ties continue delivering ⑤fresh opportunities that close relationships simply cannot offer.

Time-management researchers frequently mention a principle known as Parkinson's Law, which states that work ①expands to fill the time available for its completion. According to this idea, a task that could be finished in one hour will often stretch to fill an entire afternoon if that much time is scheduled for it. Students who set ②vague deadlines frequently experience this effect, spending extra hours refining a report that was already ③complete. Employees given a full week for a simple project may also delay meaningful progress until the final days, even though the actual work requires far ④more effort. This pattern happens partly because people unconsciously adjust their pace to match perceived urgency. Setting shorter, more specific deadlines can ⑤counter this tendency, forcing tasks to fit within a tighter and more realistic window.

During sleep, the brain does not simply rest; it actively reorganizes the day's experiences into lasting memories through a process called consolidation. Newly formed memories are initially ①fragile and stored primarily in a brain region called the hippocampus, which has ②unlimited long-term capacity. While a person sleeps, particularly during the deep stages of non-REM sleep, neural activity replays these fresh memory traces in rapid, compressed sequences, gradually transferring the information to the cortex for more ③durable, long-term storage. This replay strengthens the connections between neurons that encoded the original experience, making the memory more ④resistant to interference from unrelated events the following day. Sleep researchers have demonstrated this effect experimentally: participants who slept after learning a list of word pairs recalled more items the next day than participants who remained awake instead. Crucially, the benefit was not limited to simple recall; sleep also seemed to help participants ⑤extract general patterns from the material, suggesting that consolidation involves more than passive storage.

Long before a user finishes typing a sentence, the keyboard on most smartphones has already begun guessing what word comes next. This feature relies on a language model trained to notice which words commonly follow one another, so it can offer a shortlist of likely candidates, saving users countless keystrokes over the course of a day. This constant personalization, however, creates a subtle side effect that few users notice: some linguists worry that _______________.

As technology continues to reshape the job market, educators and employers increasingly agree on which skills will matter most in the coming decades. Beyond technical knowledge, employers consistently rank problem-solving and adaptability among the most valuable qualities in job candidates. Schools have begun redesigning curricula to emphasize these competencies, moving away from rote memorization toward project-based learning that mirrors real workplace challenges. Some critics worry that this shift undervalues traditional academic knowledge, but most experts insist that ___________.

Athletes preparing for major endurance events sometimes train for weeks at high altitude, where the air contains less oxygen than at sea level. In this thin air, the body responds by producing more red blood cells, which carry oxygen more efficiently through the bloodstream to working muscles. When these athletes return to sea level, their blood retains this elevated capacity for a limited period, potentially translating into improved endurance performance. However, the benefits of altitude training are far from guaranteed, since individual athletes respond quite differently to the same conditions, and some experience excessive fatigue that undermines the very training they hoped to complete. Many elite programs therefore follow a strategy known as live high, train low, in which _______________.

주어진 문장: Better rested individuals, in turn, tend to have more patience and energy for the people around them. A growing number of people are practicing what is now called digital detox, the deliberate decision to stop using smartphones for a set period. ( ① ) Rather than checking notifications every few minutes, participants unplug for a weekend, a week, or sometimes even longer. ( ② ) Numerous studies suggest that this temporary withdrawal produces real benefits for both the mind and the body. ( ③ ) First, attention spans fragmented by constant notifications gradually recover, allowing people to concentrate on single tasks for longer stretches. ( ④ ) Second, avoiding screens before bedtime improves sleep quality, since blue light emitted by devices is known to disrupt natural sleep cycles. ( ⑤ ) Third, people freed from their phones often rediscover the pleasure of face-to-face conversations that had been replaced by texting. Critics argue that complete disconnection is impractical in a hyperconnected society, yet even brief, regular breaks appear to restore balance. Therefore, scheduling periodic digital detox sessions deserves serious consideration.