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.

Sociologists use the term homophily ①to describe the tendency of people to form connections with others who share similar backgrounds, opinions, or interests. This principle explains why classmates from the same major often become close friends, while coworkers with shared hobbies naturally gravitate toward one another. Because similarity reduces the effort required to understand another person's perspective, relationships ②built on shared traits tend to feel comfortable and require less negotiation. However, this same comfort can narrow the range of viewpoints someone ③encounters, since surrounding oneself with similar people limits exposure to different ideas. Social media platforms intensify this pattern through recommendation algorithms that ④suggest new friends based on shared interests or similar browsing history. As a result, users often find their online circles becoming increasingly homogeneous, filled with people who think and behave much like themselves. Recognizing this tendency ⑤allow individuals to make deliberate efforts to broaden their social networks.

Jihun made a resolution ①to study English for two hours every day. For the first three days, he studied exactly as planned and ②felt proud of himself. However, on the fourth day, he skipped his study time because he was too exhausted, and within a week, his resolution had disappeared. ③Feeling disappointed, Jihun talked to his older sister about it, and she suggested that he ④try a smaller, more realistic goal instead of a large one. Following her advice, he changed his plan to studying English for only twenty minutes each night, and this small goal felt less overwhelming, so he managed ⑤keeping it every day for a month.

A flexitarian is someone who mainly ①eating plant-based meals but occasionally includes meat or fish, unlike a strict vegetarian who avoids animal products entirely. This flexible diet has recently gained attention as a practical way to fight climate change, since raising livestock ②produces a significant portion of global greenhouse gas emissions. Cattle, in particular, release large amounts of methane, a gas far more powerful than carbon dioxide at ③trapping heat in the atmosphere. By replacing just a few meat-based meals each week with vegetables, grains, or legumes, individuals can noticeably shrink their carbon footprint without giving up meat completely. Nutritionists also emphasize that flexitarian eating is easier to maintain than full vegetarianism, because it ④allows flexibility rather than demanding absolute discipline. Therefore, many environmental groups now promote flexitarianism as a realistic first step, ⑤believing that gradual change, rather than sudden restriction, is more likely to spread widely across society.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister proposed a concept called ego depletion theory, which suggests that willpower functions like a muscle that gradually ①strengthens after repeated use. According to this theory, every act of self-control, from resisting a snack to concentrating on difficult homework, draws from the same ②limited mental resource. As this resource becomes ③depleted throughout the day, later decisions require more effort and are more likely to fail. For instance, someone who exercises discipline avoiding distractions all morning may ④struggle to resist checking a phone by evening. Likewise, dieters report that self-control weakens sharply at night, after hours of resisting food. Some researchers argue that short breaks, adequate sleep, and blood sugar levels can help ⑤restore this depleted resource.

ESG management refers to a company's efforts to consider Environmental, Social, and Governance factors alongside profit when making business decisions. Investors increasingly rely on ESG ratings to judge whether a company is managed responsibly and sustainably over the long term. Recently, however, many corporations have learned to boost their ESG scores without genuinely transforming their operations. Some firms publish glossy reports filled with impressive statistics while their actual carbon emissions barely decline, exploiting the fact that ESG evaluation systems still lack consistent global standards. This gap between appearance and substance has led critics to demand stricter, more transparent criteria for measuring corporate responsibility. Genuine ESG management, in contrast, requires _______________. Investors who wish to identify truly responsible companies should therefore examine detailed disclosures instead of trusting labels alone.

A small riverside village had endured severe flooding almost every summer, watching helplessly as rising water damaged homes and destroyed crops year after year. Frustrated residents eventually decided to _______________. Engineers widened the drainage canals surrounding the village, allowing excess rainwater to flow away more efficiently instead of pooling in low-lying streets. Meanwhile, several families whose houses stood in the most vulnerable areas relocated to higher ground, even though leaving their long-time homes was emotionally difficult. The village also installed an early warning system that sent alerts to residents' phones whenever river levels rose dangerously fast. When a powerful storm struck three years later, the new measures proved effective, and the village suffered only minor damage instead of the devastating losses it had previously faced. Their resilience became a model for neighboring communities.

Our school's volunteer club, Helping Hands, tries to _______________. Each month, students visit a nearby nursing home and spend an afternoon talking with elderly residents. For example, they read newspapers aloud or just listen to old stories from the residents. In addition, members collect used books and toys from classmates and donate them to a community center downtown. Some students feel nervous before their first visit, unsure of what to say to strangers. However, most discover that a warm smile works better than perfect words. Therefore, the club's real goal is not just finishing hours for a report card. Instead, it teaches members that caring for others grows into a lasting habit, like watering a plant daily. By the end of the year, many students say the club changed how they see their community.

Jimin joined the school band club in March, but she had never performed before an audience. The club's first concert was only two weeks away, and everyone felt nervous. (A) Instead of laughing at her mistakes, however, the other members waited patiently and played the section again with her. The drummer, Suho, suggested that she focus on just one part at a time, and slowly her fingers grew more confident. (B) As a result, the club practiced until the melody sounded smooth the night before the concert. When Jimin finally walked onto the stage, she thought of her friends' patience instead of her fear, and the audience's warm applause proved that their support had made the difference. (C) During practice, her hands shook whenever the song reached the chorus, and she kept missing the same chord.

During sleep, the brain does not simply rest; it actively reorganizes the day's experiences into lasting memories through a process called consolidation. (A) 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 extract general patterns from the material, suggesting that consolidation involves more than passive storage. (B) Newly formed memories are initially fragile and stored primarily in a brain region called the hippocampus, which has limited long-term capacity. (C) 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 durable, long-term storage. This replay strengthens the connections between neurons that encoded the original experience, making the memory more resistant to interference from unrelated events the following day.