영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Sensors buried in the soil now report moisture levels in real time, drones survey entire fields for signs of disease within minutes, and automated systems adjust irrigation without a farmer ever ①walking the rows. For large operations with the capital ②to invest, these tools have measurably increased yields while reducing water waste, addressing two problems that traditional farming has struggled with for generations. Smaller family farms, however, often cannot afford the upfront cost of this equipment, and some worry that the gap between high-tech and traditional operations will only ③widen as the technology advances further. There is also a quieter cultural cost that rarely appears in productivity reports: generations of farming knowledge, passed down through direct observation of soil, weather, and crops, risk ④being replaced by dashboards and automated alerts that few young farmers ⑤teaching to question.

Philosopher Robert Nozick asked his readers to imagine a machine capable of producing any experience they desired, from writing a great novel to falling in love, all indistinguishable from reality once they were plugged in. Neuroscientists would simply stimulate the brain to generate a lifetime of perfectly satisfying experiences. If pleasure and the avoidance of pain were truly all that mattered, as classical hedonism claims, then everyone should rush to connect themselves permanently to such a machine. Yet when people actually consider the offer, most hesitate, and many refuse outright. Nozick took this reluctance as evidence that _______________.

People routinely seek out information that confirms what they already believe while overlooking or dismissing evidence that contradicts those beliefs, a pattern known as confirmation bias. Investors who believe a particular company will succeed tend to interpret ambiguous news about that company favorably, while skeptical investors interpret identical news unfavorably, even though both groups are examining the same underlying facts. Correcting for this bias therefore requires deliberate effort, since the mind offers no natural signal indicating that its search for information has been ___________ rather than balanced.

Individuals rarely evaluate their own lives in isolation; instead, they measure their achievements, possessions, and status against a reference group, a set of people they use as a standard for comparison. This group need not be one to which a person actually belongs. Sociologists distinguish between normative reference groups, which shape a person's values and behavior, and comparative reference groups, which merely provide a benchmark for self-assessment. Robert Merton showed that soldiers who compared their promotion chances to peers within their own slow-moving unit often felt more satisfied than soldiers in units with faster promotion rates, because _______________. This counterintuitive finding demonstrates that satisfaction depends less on objective circumstances than on the group against which those circumstances are measured.

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger devised a now-famous thought experiment not to describe an actual laboratory procedure, but to expose an absurdity hidden within a leading interpretation of quantum mechanics. Imagine a cat sealed inside a closed box together with a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter, and a vial of poison gas rigged to break open the instant the atom decays. Because the atom's decay is governed by genuine quantum randomness, standard quantum theory describes the atom, before anyone looks, as existing in a superposition of having decayed and not having decayed at the same time. If the theory is applied consistently to the entire box, the cat itself would have to be considered simultaneously alive and dead until an observer opens the lid and looks inside. Schrödinger intended this image to sound obviously ridiculous, using the cat's absurd fate to question whether _______________.

Dual coding theory, first proposed to explain why certain kinds of information are remembered more readily than others, holds that the mind processes verbal and visual material through two partially independent channels rather than a single unified system. (A) Consequently, dual coding theory has profound implications for instructional design, suggesting that combining carefully chosen visuals with concise verbal explanations can strengthen students' long-term retention of complex material. (B) According to this account, words and other linguistic symbols are encoded primarily through a verbal channel that represents meaning in an abstract, sequential form, while pictures and concrete objects are encoded through an imagery channel that preserves spatial and perceptual detail. (C) When information engages both channels simultaneously, as when a textbook pairs a written explanation with an accompanying diagram, the resulting memory trace benefits from two separate, mutually reinforcing pathways of retrieval rather than just one. This redundancy explains the well-documented picture superiority effect, whereby concrete, easily visualized words tend to be recalled more accurately than abstract terms that resist mental imagery.

The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple question: if every plank of a wooden ship is replaced one by one over many years, is the vessel that eventually results still the same ship it once was? (A) Suppose a careful collector gathered every discarded plank and reassembled them into a second vessel, built exactly as the original once stood. (B) Two ships would then exist side by side, each with an equal claim to being the genuine one, and no obvious way to decide between them. (C) Most people's first instinct is to answer yes, since each individual replacement seems too small to erase the ship's identity, but the puzzle grows far sharper once a second twist is introduced.

Facial recognition software has moved rapidly from airport security lines into shopping malls, schools, and even private apartment buildings. (A) Independent studies, however, have repeatedly found that many commercial systems perform less accurately on women and people with darker skin tones. (B) Proponents note that the technology can unlock doors, catch shoplifters, and speed up identity checks far faster than any human guard could manage. (C) Several cities have already reported cases in which an innocent person was detained based on a flawed match.

None of these individual passersby, however, has any direct evidence that the food itself is worth the wait. Consider how a line forms outside a small restaurant on an otherwise quiet street. ( ① ) The first few patrons may have arrived simply because of a personal recommendation or a delayed reservation, factors entirely unrelated to the restaurant's actual quality. ( ② ) As the line grows, passersby begin to notice it and, assuming that such popularity must be earned, decide to join the queue themselves. ( ③ ) Each additional person who joins makes the line appear even more compelling to the next passerby, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of imitation. ( ④ ) They are, in effect, relying entirely on the visible behavior of strangers as a proxy for information they do not personally possess. ( ⑤ ) The restaurant's true culinary merit, whatever it may be, has become almost irrelevant to the continued growth of the line.

The label "biodegradable," in other words, can be far more conditional than consumers realize. A plastic bag that fully decomposes within months rather than lingering for centuries sounds almost too convenient to be real, yet certain bioplastics on the market do exactly that under the right conditions. ( ① ) Unlike conventional plastic, derived almost entirely from petroleum, many bioplastics are synthesized from renewable feedstocks such as corn starch or sugarcane, sometimes with the help of bacteria engineered to produce plastic-like polymers as a byproduct of their metabolism. ( ② ) Not every bioplastic biodegrades quickly, however. ( ③ ) Some marketed as eco-friendly break down only in industrial composting facilities that reach conditions rarely found in a backyard compost heap or the open ocean. ( ④ ) Critics point out that growing crops for bioplastic production can compete with food crops for farmland and water, complicating the assumption that a biological origin automatically makes a material more sustainable. ( ⑤ ) Researchers are now exploring bioplastics made from agricultural waste and algae instead of dedicated crops, hoping to sidestep this competition for land while preserving the benefits that first made bioplastics appealing.