영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Consider a large heap containing ten thousand grains of sand. Nearly everyone agrees that removing a single grain from such a heap ①leave another heap behind; surely one grain could never make the difference between a heap and a non-heap. Yet if this principle is applied repeatedly, grain by grain, the heap eventually shrinks to a single lonely grain, or even to no grains at all, and logic alone seems to ②force us to accept that this final result still counts as a heap. Something has clearly gone wrong along the way, since no reasonable person would ③call one grain of sand a heap, but pinpointing exactly which single removal transformed a heap into a non-heap seems ④impossible. The puzzle exposes a deep discomfort with vague terms like "heap," "tall," or "bald," concepts that seem to admit no sharp boundary yet are ⑤used confidently in everyday language.

Anyone designing a presentation, a curriculum, or a grocery list should attend to a well-documented pattern in human memory known as the serial position effect. When people ①are asking to recall items from a list right after studying it, they consistently remember the items presented at the beginning and end far better than those buried in the middle. The advantage for early items, called the primacy effect, ②arises because those items receive more rehearsal and are more likely to be transferred into long-term storage before subsequent items compete for attention. The advantage for final items, known as the recency effect, ③occurs because those items remain accessible in short-term memory at the moment of recall. Middle items suffer because they must compete for limited rehearsal opportunities while lacking the stability afforded by extended processing. Communicators who ④ignore this pattern risk burying their most important point where it will predictably be forgotten. A more effective strategy, therefore, ⑤places the crucial message at the beginning or end, precisely where memory proves most reliable.

When anthropologists first began systematically studying societies far removed from their own, many unconsciously judged unfamiliar customs against the standards of their home culture, a tendency now ①known as ethnocentrism. Cultural relativism emerged as a corrective principle, ②holding that a society's practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than measured against an outside standard presumed to be universal. Anthropologist Franz Boas argued that no culture possesses an inherently superior set of values, and that apparent oddities, once ③examined closely, typically serve coherent functions within their own social systems. Cultural relativism transformed fields ranging from anthropology to international development, ④encouraged researchers to suspend quick judgment and seek local meaning before drawing conclusions. Critics caution, however, that taken to an extreme, the principle risks ⑤excusing practices that cause genuine harm.

Prospect theory proposes that the subjective value of money is not a straight line but a curved function, ①differing sharply from the assumptions of classical economic models. In the domain of gains, the function bends downward as amounts ②increase, so the psychological difference between earning zero and one hundred dollars feels far greater than between earning one thousand and eleven hundred. A parallel pattern appears among losses, where the curve ③bend in the opposite direction, yet sensitivity still fades as the amount grows larger. This tendency, ④known as diminishing sensitivity, explains why a shopper barely notices a ten dollar increase on a two thousand dollar purchase. Researchers illustrate this curvature with graphs ⑤shaped like an S turned sideways, sloping gently near the center and flattening toward both extremes.

Many households save far less for retirement than conventional financial advice would recommend, not necessarily because they lack the resources to do so, but because a combination of procrastination, present bias, and the discomfort of forgoing current consumption repeatedly ①delays the decision to begin saving. Recognizing this gap between intention and action, some economists have proposed a savings program in which employees commit today to allocating a portion of their future salary increases toward retirement savings, rather than being asked to ②increase their current take-home pay immediately. Because the sacrifice applies only to income not yet received, the commitment feels far less ③painful than an equivalent reduction in present earnings would, making employees considerably more willing to enroll. Once enrolled, the contribution rate automatically rises with each subsequent raise, gradually ④increasing savings without requiring any further deliberate action from participants. Field trials of such programs have reported substantial increases in average savings rates over several years, alongside participant satisfaction that remains notably ⑤high.

Sociologist Mark Granovetter challenged a common assumption when he found that job seekers were more likely to hear about new opportunities from casual acquaintances than from close friends and family. This finding, published as the strength of weak ties, rests on a structural insight: close friends tend to belong to the same tight social circle and therefore already share most of the same information, whereas casual acquaintances typically move in ①different circles and can act as bridges to information a person would otherwise never encounter. Weak ties, precisely because they connect otherwise ②separate networks, transmit novel information more efficiently than the redundant, overlapping ties within a tightly bonded group. Granovetter's insight has since been applied well beyond job searches, informing research on how innovations ③spread, how political movements recruit new members, and how epidemics travel through a population, suggesting that casual relationships may ④quietly determine access to opportunities that shape an entire career, a conclusion most researchers now consider entirely ⑤implausible.

Behavioral economists have long observed that people tend to feel the pain of losing something more intensely than the pleasure of gaining an equivalent amount, a tendency known as loss aversion. Consider an investor who refuses to sell a declining stock, clinging to the hope that its price will eventually recover, even when all available evidence indicates that selling and reinvesting elsewhere would be more rational. As a result, loss aversion frequently pushes individuals toward ___________ rather than toward the outcome that would maximize their overall welfare.

Emissions trading, a market-based mechanism for curbing greenhouse gases, allows governments to set an overall limit on carbon output while letting firms trade permits within that limit. (A) Under this system, known as cap-and-trade, companies that cut emissions more cheaply than required can sell surplus allowances to firms facing higher reduction costs. Proponents argue that this flexibility lets society reach a given environmental target at the lowest overall cost, since abatement shifts toward whoever can achieve it most economically. (B) Consequently, many economists now advocate combining trading with a price floor, a minimum permit price that keeps the market from collapsing during weak demand, thereby preserving the cost-effectiveness for which trading is valued. (C) Critics, however, contend that trading schemes frequently allocate too many permits, a flaw that has historically depressed carbon prices and blunted incentives to invest in cleaner technology. For example, early phases of several regional markets granted allowances so generously that permit prices collapsed, leaving polluters with little pressure to change their practices.

When sociologist Émile Durkheim studied suicide rates across different societies, he noticed something puzzling: rates rose not only during economic depression but also during sudden prosperity. (B) Decades later, Robert Merton extended the concept to explain deviance within stable societies, proposing that anomie also arises when a culture insists that everyone pursue identical goals while denying many people the legitimate means to achieve them. (A) He concluded that both crises share a common feature, the collapse of shared norms, a state Durkheim called anomie, arguing that rapid social change can strip away the moral guidelines that regulate human desire. (C) Faced with this gap between aspiration and opportunity, some individuals conform, but others turn to innovation, ritual, retreat, or rebellion.

This arrangement becomes especially troubling when health data influences decisions far beyond fitness, such as insurance premiums or employment screening. Millions of people now wear devices that continuously track their heart rate, sleep patterns, and daily activity, generating an intimate stream of health data. ( ① ) Users generally assume this information belongs to them, since it is drawn directly from their own bodies. ( ② ) In practice, however, the terms of service that few people read often grant the manufacturer broad rights to store, analyze, and even sell anonymized versions of that data to insurers or advertisers. ( ③ ) Advocates for reform argue that biological data deserves a category of protection stronger than ordinary consumer information. ( ④ ) This is precisely because it can never truly be replaced or reset once it has been exposed. ( ⑤ )