영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Until last spring, Minji rarely thought twice about ①**tossing** 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 ②**expected finding** boring. Instead, watching seabirds mistake plastic fragments for food ③**left** her strangely unsettled, and she found herself thinking about the assignment long after class ended. The next morning, almost without deciding to, she ④**slipped** 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, ⑤**declining** a plastic straw, and reusing a shopping bag were quietly adding up. Small choices, she discovered, become meaningful once repeated.

Imagine a cafeteria where a healthy salad ①sits at eye level while fried snacks rest on a low shelf. Nobody is ②forbidden from choosing the snacks, yet most people quietly pick the salad instead. This simple technique illustrates a nudge, a concept from behavioral economics that gently ③guides people toward better choices without restricting their freedom. Companies and governments increasingly apply nudges to encourage sustainable consumption. For example, some hotels print reminders on towels stating that most guests reuse them, which ④persuade new guests to do the same and save water. Similarly, energy bills that compare a household's usage with that of efficient neighbors often lead people to reduce electricity use. Unlike strict regulations or heavy taxes, nudges ⑤rely on subtle changes in design rather than force. Critics argue nudges alone cannot solve large environmental problems, but combined with stronger policies, they can meaningfully shift everyday habits toward sustainability.

Anyone who has ever promised to finish a project "by Friday," only ① to still being working on it weeks later, has experienced the planning fallacy firsthand. This term describes the persistent tendency of individuals and organizations ② to underestimate how long a task will take, how much it will cost, and how many complications will inevitably arise. What makes this bias particularly stubborn is that awareness of past failures rarely leads to more accurate predictions; a construction firm that ③ finished its last three projects late will often insist, with genuine confidence, that this next project will be different. Researchers argue that planners focus almost exclusively on the specific steps of the current task while ④ ignoring the broader statistical record of similar projects that came before. Until such external correction becomes standard practice, ambitious deadlines will likely continue to be ⑤ broken with remarkable consistency.

On a summer evening, downtown streets often feel ①noticeably hotter than nearby parks or suburban neighborhoods, even after the sun has set. This phenomenon, known as the urban heat island effect, occurs when cities ②retain more heat than surrounding rural areas because of their dense concentration of asphalt, concrete, and buildings. Unlike soil or vegetation, which absorb and release heat ③instantly, these man-made surfaces absorb sunlight during the day and slowly radiate it back at night, preventing temperatures from cooling. Tall buildings packed closely together also block wind, trapping warm air within narrow streets. In contrast, areas with ④abundant trees and open water naturally stay cooler, since plants release moisture that helps lower surrounding temperatures. To reduce this effect, many cities have begun installing rooftop gardens and ⑤expanding public parks, hoping that additional greenery will absorb less heat than pavement does.

Viral marketing campaigns rarely succeed simply because a company has a large advertising budget. (A) A beverage brand, for example, spent almost nothing on production yet reached millions of viewers through a simple dance challenge. (B) Instead, such campaigns tend to succeed when they feel genuine and encourage ordinary users to participate creatively. (C) Other companies later tried to copy the idea, but most failed to capture the same spontaneous energy.

Companies have discovered that ordinary advertisements no longer capture the attention of young consumers as effectively as they once did. (A) As a result, many brands now spend a large portion of their advertising budgets on influencer partnerships rather than television commercials. (B) This is because influencers build long-term relationships with their audiences, which makes recommendations feel personal rather than commercial. (C) However, brands must choose their partners carefully, since an influencer's reputation can directly affect how a product is perceived.

As solar and wind power expand rapidly across national grids, engineers face a challenge that receives far less public attention than the construction of the generating facilities themselves. (A) One proposed solution involves large-scale battery storage systems, which absorb surplus electricity generated during periods of high output and release it later when generation declines. Another approach relies on expanding transmission networks across wider regions, so that electricity generated in a sunny area can be redirected to places experiencing a shortfall. (B) Unlike conventional power plants, which can adjust their output to match demand at almost any moment, solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity only when sunlight or wind is available, producing supply that fluctuates constantly. This intermittency means that grid operators must balance supply and demand even when renewable output suddenly drops, such as when clouds cover a solar farm or wind speeds fall. (C) Grid operators must therefore invest in infrastructure capable of accommodating this variability, rather than assuming renewable sources can simply replace fossil fuels without adjustment. Without such investment, integrating renewable energy could paradoxically undermine the very reliability that modern electricity grids are expected to provide.

주어진 문장: This asymmetry is troubling precisely because, in reality, risk and benefit are often unrelated or even inversely related. When people are asked to judge how risky or beneficial a particular technology is, they rarely conduct anything resembling a careful cost-benefit analysis. ( ① ) Instead, they consult a quick emotional impression, an instinctive sense of whether the technology feels good or feels bad, and let that impression guide their entire judgment. ( ② ) This mental shortcut, known as the affect heuristic, produces a curious pattern that traditional risk theory struggles to explain: activities people like tend to be judged as both safer and more beneficial, while activities they dislike are judged as both riskier and less beneficial, even when no logical relationship between risk and benefit exists. ( ③ ) For example, when researchers presented a fictional industrial chemical alongside a brief description emphasizing its convenience, participants rated it not only as more useful but also, illogically, as less dangerous. ( ④ ) Because emotional impressions form so rapidly and feel so trustworthy, correcting for this heuristic requires deliberate effort; simply presenting more accurate statistics to already anxious or enthusiastic audiences rarely changes their underlying judgment. ( ⑤ )

주어진 문장: Traditional economic models, in fact, offer no straightforward account of why unpaid, amateur labor should raise an object's perceived worth in the eyes of its very creator. Why do people often overvalue objects they have partly built themselves, even when the finished product is objectively inferior to something they could have simply purchased? ( ① ) This puzzle, which researchers named after a furniture retailer famous for selling items that require home assembly, challenges the standard economic assumption that value is determined solely by an object's inherent qualities. ( ② ) In a series of experiments, participants who assembled a plain storage box were willing to pay nearly as much for their own imperfect creation as they were for a professionally built version, despite being fully aware of its flaws. ( ③ ) Labor, it seems, functions as a kind of psychological investment: once effort has been poured into a task, individuals become reluctant to judge the outcome objectively, because doing so would require admitting that their effort was partly wasted. ( ④ ) This tendency helps explain why consumers often prefer products that demand some degree of personal assembly, even when a comparable finished item is available at a lower price and requires no time investment whatsoever. ( ⑤ )

주어진 문장: Unlike a rigid vegan diet, this approach does not require anyone to give up their favorite dishes completely. A flexitarian is someone who mainly eats plant-based meals but occasionally includes meat or fish, unlike a strict vegetarian who avoids animal products entirely. ( ① ) This flexible diet has recently gained attention as a practical way to fight climate change, since raising livestock produces a significant portion of global greenhouse gas emissions. ( ② ) Cattle, in particular, release large amounts of methane, a gas far more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. ( ③ ) 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. ( ④ ) Nutritionists also emphasize that flexitarian eating is easier to maintain than full vegetarianism, because it allows flexibility rather than demanding absolute discipline. ( ⑤ ) Therefore, many environmental groups now promote flexitarianism as a realistic first step, believing that gradual change, rather than sudden restriction, is more likely to spread widely across society.