영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

문제 1

Last summer, our neighborhood association ①invited 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 ugly, mismatched result, since some volunteers ②had 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 ③assign each volunteer a section matched to their comfort level, from simple solid-color backgrounds to detailed flowers. Beginners filled in wide open skies, while experienced painters ④added fine details like veins on leaves or shadows under birds. When the plastic sheets finally came down, the mural looked remarkably unified, not despite the many different hands involved, but because each hand had ⑤been given a task suited to what it could do well.

문제 2

People often recognize, in calm reflection, that their future selves will be tempted to ①abandoning a goal they currently value. Rather than relying solely on willpower at the critical moment, they may choose to restrict their own future options in advance, a strategy ②known as precommitment. By making certain choices costly, inconvenient, or impossible to reverse, individuals can protect a long-term goal from a short-term impulse that has not yet ③arisen. A person hoping to save money might lock funds into an account that penalizes early withdrawal, removing the very temptation that would otherwise be difficult to ④resist. Similarly, someone ⑤determined to finish a project might publicly announce a deadline, transforming private intentions into a commitment that carries social consequences if broken.

문제 3

A smart thermostat that learns a family's daily rhythm can lower the temperature automatically before everyone wakes up cold, while smart lights ①that follow a resident's schedule no longer need to be switched on and off by hand. These small conveniences rest on a shared foundation: sensors collect data about temperature, motion, and light throughout the home, and an algorithm gradually learns ②which settings match each household's actual habits rather than a factory default. Over months of use, the system becomes noticeably better at ③anticipate needs, often adjusting settings moments before a resident would have reached for a switch. Yet convenience comes with a trade-off that many households ④overlook. Every one of these small adjustments depends on constant data collection, meaning that a detailed record of when people wake, leave, and return home is quietly ⑤being stored somewhere beyond their immediate control.

문제 4

German sociologist Georg Simmel argued that the psychological experience of city life differs fundamentally from life in small towns, primarily because urban residents are ①bombarded with a much greater volume of stimuli than the human nervous system evolved to process. To cope with this constant sensory overload, Simmel proposed, city dwellers develop what he called a blasé attitude, a protective indifference in which individuals mentally ②sharpen their emotional reaction to the surrounding crowd, treating most encounters with calculated detachment rather than genuine engagement. This detachment, while sometimes criticized as cold or impersonal, also grants urban residents a distinctive ③freedom, since so few people know or judge them personally. Simmel therefore viewed anonymity as a ④double-edged feature of modern life, one that isolates individuals from deep communal bonds while simultaneously ⑤liberating them from the constant surveillance of small-town social life.

문제 5

Many people struggling to fall asleep in noisy environments turn to white noise machines, devices that emit a ①chaotic, uniform sound covering a broad range of frequencies. The appeal lies in a phenomenon called auditory masking, in which a constant background sound makes sudden noises, such as a slamming door, ②less noticeable to the sleeping brain. Without this masking effect, an abrupt change in sound is far more likely to trigger a brief awakening, even if the sleeper does not ③consciously remember it the next morning. Studies comparing sleep in quiet rooms with sleep alongside white noise have found that participants using white noise experienced fewer of these brief awakenings and reported feeling more ④rested. However, researchers caution that the benefit depends heavily on volume and consistency, since noise that is too loud or that varies unpredictably can itself become a source of ⑤disruption rather than a remedy.

문제 6

Wearable devices that track sleep have become ①enormously popular, promising a detailed breakdown of light, deep, and REM sleep each night. These gadgets typically rely on movement sensors and heart rate monitors to estimate sleep stages, since directly measuring brain activity would require equipment found only in a sleep laboratory. This ②indirect approach, however, introduces ③significant uncertainty. Independent studies comparing wearable data with polysomnography, the gold-standard method used in clinical sleep labs, have found that consumer devices are reasonably accurate at distinguishing sleep from wakefulness but considerably less reliable at identifying specific sleep stages. Some trackers overestimate deep sleep, while others underestimate the amount of time spent in REM sleep, and the margin of error can vary ④narrowly between brands. Despite these limitations, many users have come to treat the nightly score generated by their device as an ⑤objective medical verdict, sometimes experiencing anxiety when the number falls below what they expect, a phenomenon researchers have begun calling orthosomnia.

문제 7

Highlighting an awkward sentence and instantly seeing three smoother alternatives has become a routine part of writing for many students, thanks to AI writing assistants built into word processors and browsers. These tools check grammar and spelling, of course, but the more advanced versions go further, suggesting clearer phrasing, ①flagging repetitive words, and even adjusting tone to sound more formal or more casual depending on the purpose. Teachers generally ②welcome the grammar and spelling support, since it frees up class time to focus on argument and structure rather than comma placement. Concerns ③shrink, however, around the tone and phrasing suggestions, which can gradually nudge every student's writing toward a similar, polished style, making it harder to tell an individual voice from a suggestion generated by the same underlying model. Some schools have begun asking students to submit an early draft alongside the final version, specifically to ④preserve evidence of a student's own ⑤original voice.

문제 8

Exercise does far more than strengthen muscles and the heart; it also produces measurable changes within the brain itself. (A) Interestingly, aerobic activities such as running or swimming appear to produce more pronounced cognitive benefits than purely strength-based training, though the precise biological reasons for this difference remain an active area of investigation. (B) Studies comparing physically active students to sedentary peers have repeatedly found that the active group performs better on tests of attention and problem-solving, even when the exercise session ends well before the test begins. (C) During sustained physical activity, the body releases a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which supports the growth of new neurons and strengthens connections between existing ones.

문제 9

Opening most camera apps today reveals a row of filters that can smooth skin, brighten eyes, and reshape a jawline before a photo is even taken, all powered by AI models trained to recognize facial features in real time. (A) Psychologists have grown concerned about a specific consequence of this shift: people increasingly compare their unfiltered reflection in a mirror to a filtered version of themselves seen constantly on a screen. (B) What began as a playful novelty has become a default setting for many users, subtly adjusting nearly every selfie posted online. (C) Some social media platforms have responded by labeling heavily edited photos or banning certain filters that alter body shape.

문제 10

Whenever a user marks a message as spam or rescues a message mistakenly filtered out, that action becomes new training data, sharpening the filter's future decisions. Every day, email providers quietly block billions of unwanted messages before they ever reach a user's inbox, a task that would be impossible without an AI filtering system running constantly in the background. ( ① ) The filter examines each incoming message for suspicious patterns, including certain keywords, unusual sender addresses, and formatting tricks that scammers commonly rely on to slip past detection. ( ② ) What makes the system effective is that it keeps learning after launch. ( ③ ) This creates a constant back-and-forth, since spammers study which messages get blocked and then adjust their wording to slip through again. ( ④ ) As a result, spam filtering is less like a fixed wall and more like an ongoing contest, with each side continuously adapting to outsmart the other. ( ⑤ )