영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Every July, our school library launches a summer reading challenge that invites students to read at least five books before classes begin again in September. Students who complete the challenge receive a ①small prize, but many say the real reward is something else entirely. Without daily homework and tests to worry about, summer gives students ②rare freedom to choose books purely because they sound interesting, not because a teacher assigned them. Librarians notice that students often pick more ③common genres during the challenge, including graphic novels, poetry, and nonfiction about hobbies they enjoy. This freedom seems to ④matter more than the prize itself, since students who only cared about winning tend to quit once the reading feels difficult, while curious readers keep going. Teachers who track student progress after summer report that challenge participants often return in September with noticeably ⑤stronger reading habits than classmates who read nothing over the break.

My cousin, who has never taken a single music lesson, recently used a composing app on her phone to write a short song for her friend's birthday video. Watching her work, I realized the app ①worsened much of the technical difficulty that used to stop beginners from composing at all, automatically keeping her melody in key and suggesting chords that matched the mood she selected. What the app could not do, however, was decide which four notes actually felt right for the opening line, or when a ②pause said more than another note would have. She spent nearly an hour ③adjusting a single short phrase until it matched the feeling she wanted to capture, deleting and replaying it dozens of times. Watching her patient trial and error, I understood that these tools ④lower the technical barrier to making music, but they do not remove the very human task of deciding what a piece of music is actually trying to ⑤say.

In the late nineteenth century, the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus undertook a rigorous investigation of forgetting by serving as his own experimental subject. He memorized thousands of ①meaningless three-letter syllables so that prior knowledge could not skew his results. After learning each list to perfection, he tested his retention at intervals ranging from twenty minutes to a month later. He ②ignored how many repetitions were required to relearn the material each time. The resulting curve revealed a consistent pattern. Forgetting proceeds rapidly during the initial hours following learning, then gradually decelerates until the rate of loss becomes almost imperceptible. Roughly half of the acquired information ③vanished within the first hour alone. Yet whatever survived that initial plunge tended to ④persist for much longer periods. Ebbinghaus further found that distributing study sessions across several days produced better retention than cramming the same repetition into one sitting. This finding, now central to modern learning theory, implies that revisiting material shortly before it would otherwise be forgotten ⑤interrupts the decline of the forgetting curve.

When people encounter an individual who appears to memorize enormous quantities of specialized information ①effortlessly, they often assume that person possesses an innate gift. Cognitive psychologists, however, contend that such feats ②rarely stem from raw talent alone. Instead, such feats arise from a learned skill known as chunking, whereby scattered pieces of information are consolidated into larger, meaningful units. A landmark study of chess players demonstrated this principle. When shown a board arranged according to plausible game positions, grandmasters reproduced the layout perfectly. Yet when the same pieces were scattered randomly, their performance ③collapsed to the level of novices. This pattern reveals that expert memory is not larger in raw capacity but is instead organized around patterns accumulated through years of deliberate practice. If chunking, rather than innate aptitude, ④contradicts expert performance, then educators should stop treating talent as fixed and destiny-bound. Curricula ought to be redesigned to cultivate pattern recognition explicitly, since doing so would grant far more students access to expertise once ⑤presumed reserved for the naturally gifted.

Students who read many books across many different subjects often develop a habit that quieter learners sometimes lack: 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 notice when two different subjects share a similar pattern. This kind of connection-making is closely related to what psychologists call critical thinking, since _______________. Extensive reading also builds a large mental library of examples, which makes it easier to evaluate whether a new claim sounds reasonable or exaggerated.

For most of the twentieth century, a library was simply a quiet room full of books, and visitors were expected to stay silent while they searched the shelves. (A) Librarians say this change did not happen by accident, since fewer people needed a library simply to find facts as more information moved online. (B) The answer, in many neighborhoods, turned out to be space itself: a warm, free place where students could study together and children could attend a story hour. (C) Today, many public libraries look completely different, offering group study rooms, comfortable sofas, computer labs, and even small recording studios for podcasts alongside the usual shelves.

Memory researchers have long recognized that learning is not simply a matter of accumulating information without cost. Newly acquired material can collide with what the mind already holds, producing measurable disruptions in recall. (A) Conversely, when material learned later undermines the recollection of something acquired earlier, the process is labeled retroactive interference. This second mechanism explains why switching to a new keyboard layout can temporarily impair typing on a familiar one. (B) Both processes suggest that memories compete for the same limited retrieval pathways rather than resting in isolated compartments. This insight carries real implications for how students approach studying multiple similar subjects. Instead of cramming closely related material back to back, spacing out review sessions can reduce competition between overlapping traces. Varying study contexts further helps preserve accuracy for both old and new information alike. (C) When earlier knowledge interferes with the retrieval of information learned afterward, psychologists call this proactive interference. This phenomenon explains why someone who memorized an old phone number for years may struggle to recall a new one.

Science labs feel far safer than they actually are, largely because the equipment looks harmless and the experiments are carefully planned by a teacher. (A) This false sense of security leads some students to skip small precautions, such as wearing safety goggles for a "simple" experiment or tasting a substance out of curiosity. (B) Chemical reactions, however, do not distinguish between a professional laboratory and a classroom; a small amount of the wrong substance splashed into an eye can cause permanent damage within seconds. (C) Teachers repeatedly emphasize reading each instruction before touching any material, since even a familiar-looking chemical can behave unpredictably when combined with something new.

On the first day of our improv theater workshop, the instructor gave us a rule that seemed impossible to follow: never say no to whatever another performer suggests. (A) If a scene partner claimed the empty classroom was actually a submarine, our job was to accept that fact instantly and build on it, rather than correcting or rejecting the idea. (B) I found this terrifying at first, since improv offers no script to hide behind and no time to plan a clever line in advance. (C) Over several weeks, though, I noticed that the students who worried most about saying something wrong were usually the ones who froze on stage, while those who simply accepted whatever happened created the funniest scenes.

Even so, the shift has proven immensely practical, sidestepping the objection that halted so much earlier research. A single fertilized egg eventually gives rise to every cell type in the human body, from neurons to bone, a feat that has fascinated biologists for more than a century. ( ① ) Embryonic stem cells retain much of that original versatility, capable in principle of developing into almost any tissue, which is why researchers have long viewed them as a promising raw material for repairing damaged organs. ( ② ) Because harvesting these cells traditionally required destroying a human embryo, the research provoked ethical objections fierce enough to slow funding and legislation in several countries for years. ( ③ ) A breakthrough arrived when scientists discovered that ordinary adult skin cells could be reprogrammed, through the introduction of a handful of specific genes, into a state resembling embryonic versatility without ever touching an embryo. ( ④ ) These induced pluripotent cells, as they are now called, have not entirely erased the ethical debate. ( ⑤ ) They have opened a path for stem cell research that far more scientists and funding agencies are willing to support.