영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Walking through the old industrial district downtown, I ①noticed that a gray concrete wall had been transformed overnight into a wild swirl of color, letters, and cartoon figures. Some residents complained to the city office, ②calling it vandalism and demanding that workers paint over it immediately. Others argued that the same wall had been an ugly, forgotten eyesore for years, and that the graffiti artist had simply given it a voice no one else ③bothered to give it. This disagreement reveals a tension at the heart of street art: without permission, even a skillful and thoughtful piece can ④labeling a crime, yet many cities now invite graffiti artists to paint designated walls legally. The line between vandalism and art, it seems, often depends less on the paint itself than on who ⑤gave permission to use the wall.

Suppose a mad scientist removed a living brain from its body, placed it in a vat of nutrient fluid, and connected its neurons to a supercomputer capable of generating perfectly ①unrealistic sensations. The brain would experience a full and convincing world, complete with a sky, a body, and other people, without ever suspecting that none of it existed outside the simulation. This scenario, unsettling as it sounds, raises a genuinely difficult question for anyone confident in their own perception: how could a person ever ②prove that they are not that very brain right now? Ordinary evidence cannot help, since any proof gathered through the senses would itself be ③generated by the same simulation being tested. Some philosophers conclude that absolute certainty about the external world is simply ④unattainable, while others argue that the mere possibility of deception, however vivid, is not sufficient reason to ⑤abandon our everyday trust in what we perceive.

When an image-generating program produced a strikingly detailed painting in the exact style of a well-known illustrator within seconds, my art club spent an entire meeting ①ignoring what it actually meant for artists. Some members felt excited, imagining the software as a helpful tool that could speed up brainstorming or generate quick backgrounds for their comics. Others worried that the program had been trained on thousands of real illustrations scraped from the internet without the original artists' ②permission, meaning the tool's impressive results were quietly built on other people's ③uncredited labor. A few pointed out that the final image, however skillful it looked, reflected no personal memory, struggle, or ④intention, only patterns learned from existing pictures. The debate never reached a clear conclusion, but it made me realize that questions about creativity now involve not just how a picture looks, but where it actually came from and who deserves ⑤credit for it.

Among the many strategies proposed to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, one of the oldest draws on an agricultural technique predating modern industry, converting organic material into a ①stable form of charcoal known as biochar. Biochar is produced through pyrolysis, a process in which crop residues or wood chips are heated in an environment with little or no oxygen, preventing the material from burning away as in an open fire. This process leaves behind a carbon-rich solid that ②accelerates decomposition far longer than raw organic matter, locking carbon in a form remaining stable in soil for centuries. When mixed into farmland, biochar also improves soil structure, retaining moisture and nutrients otherwise lost, which can ③boost crop yields in depleted soils. For example, farmers cultivating nutrient-poor tropical soils have reported ④measurable increases in productivity after adding biochar. Nevertheless, researchers caution that the climate benefits of biochar depend on the feedstock and method used, since poorly managed pyrolysis can release as much carbon as it sequesters, ⑤undermining its own purpose.

Smart speakers have quietly become a fixture in many households, responding to spoken requests for weather updates, music, or kitchen timers. Behind this ①simple exchange lies a complex process: the device converts sound waves into text, interprets the meaning using language models, and then generates a spoken reply, all within a second or two. Because these assistants ②improve by learning from millions of interactions, they gradually become better at recognizing regional accents and casual phrasing that once confused them. Still, the technology remains far from ③perfect. Background noise, overlapping voices, or an unusual sentence structure can cause the assistant to misunderstand a simple request, sometimes with ④flawless results. Engineers continue to refine these systems, but many admit that truly natural conversation remains one of the hardest ⑤goals in the entire field of artificial intelligence.

Speed-reading courses promise a ①complicated result: read several times faster while understanding just as much as before. The techniques usually involve moving your eyes quickly down the page, skipping small words, and avoiding the habit of ②silently pronouncing each word in your head. Some students do learn to move their eyes faster after a short course. However, researchers who study reading have found a ③serious problem with these claims. Understanding a text is not just about how quickly your eyes move across it; it depends on how deeply your brain processes each sentence and connects new ideas to what you already know. When readers rush through a page at extreme speed, their comprehension usually ④drops sharply, even though they feel confident that they understood everything. In careful studies, speed-reading graduates often score no better on comprehension tests than ⑤ordinary readers who read at a normal pace.

Picture books are usually written for young children, but a growing number of adults are picking them up for themselves. At first glance, a picture book seems too ①simple for someone who has already learned to read long novels. However, many picture books deal with ②serious themes, such as loss, fear, and change, using only a few carefully chosen words. Because the text is short, every sentence carries extra weight, and readers naturally ③slow down to notice small details in the pictures. This slower pace can feel ④stressful for adults who are used to rushing through long articles and constant notifications. A picture book can also be finished in a single sitting, which makes it easy to return to the same story again and again. For these reasons, therapists and teachers sometimes recommend picture books not only to children but also to ⑤stressed adults who need a quiet moment.

Every spring, our school holds an art exhibition in the main hallway, and this year I finally submitted a painting of my own. For weeks, I compared my work to my classmates' drawings and felt ①sure that mine was not good enough to hang beside theirs. My art teacher noticed my ②hesitation and said something I did not expect: an exhibition is not a contest to find the single best picture, but a chance to show how differently people see the same world. On the morning the paintings went up, I walked past dozens of styles, from careful realistic portraits to ③boring, colorful abstractions, and none of them looked like mine. Instead of feeling embarrassed, I found myself ④curious about why each artist had made certain choices. Standing in that crowded hallway, I finally understood that the exhibition's real purpose was not to rank the paintings, but to let students discover how many different perspectives could exist in a single ⑤shared space.

Every Wednesday evening, a small group meets in a quiet cafe to talk about a book they have all just finished. Members insist that reading the same novel together changes the experience completely. Alone, a reader usually forms one interpretation and rarely questions it again. In a group, however, _______________. Members also say that having a discussion planned in advance pushes them to finish books they might otherwise put down halfway through.

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.