영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Many households save far less for retirement than conventional financial advice would recommend, not necessarily because they ①lacks the resources to do so, but because a combination of procrastination, present bias, and the discomfort of forgoing current consumption repeatedly delays 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 ②allocating a portion of their future salary increases toward retirement savings, rather than being asked to reduce their current take-home pay immediately. Because the sacrifice applies only to income not yet received, the commitment ③feels far less painful 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, ④gradually increasing 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 ⑤remains notably high.

Imagine rewriting a bacterium's code the way a programmer ①edits a line of software, and much of what synthetic biology promises begins to make sense. Researchers in this field assemble standardized genetic parts into circuits ②that can be inserted into a cell, instructing it to perform a task that no natural organism would carry out. Because these circuits are built from interchangeable parts rather than designed from scratch each time, a circuit tested in one lab can often ③reusing, with minor adjustments, in an entirely different application. Critics note that biological systems rarely behave as predictably as electronic circuits, since a gene ④inserted into a new cell can interact with existing pathways in unexpected ways, occasionally producing results no engineer intended. Even so, as the catalog of standardized parts keeps expanding, engineers are gaining confidence ⑤to design increasingly complex systems, treating the cell as a chassis onto which new functions can be loaded.

When workers receive a five percent raise in a year when prices have climbed five percent as well, their real purchasing power has not changed at all, yet many still report feeling ①noticeably better off. This tendency to judge economic well-being by ②nominal figures printed on a paycheck, rather than by what that money can actually purchase, is known among economists as money illusion. Employers exploit this pattern by favoring modest nominal raises over deeper structural adjustments, since a visible increase on a payslip ③disappoints employees more effectively than an explanation about inflation could. The illusion persists even among people who claim to understand inflation well, which suggests that the bias operates at an ④intuitive level that formal knowledge does not easily override. Some economists argue that policymakers should exploit this illusion strategically, since workers resist nominal wage cuts far more ⑤fiercely than they resist the equivalent erosion of real wages.

As private companies develop the technology to mine asteroids for rare metals and water, a legal question has become urgent: who owns the resources of outer space? Existing international treaties state that no nation may claim sovereignty over celestial bodies, but they say remarkably little about whether a private company may extract and sell what it finds there. Some governments have already passed domestic laws granting their own companies rights to material mined in space, a move that other nations view as _______________.

Classical economic theory assumes that consumers evaluate every price change in the same rational way, weighing marginal benefit against marginal cost regardless of the absolute numbers involved. Behavioral economists, however, have discovered a striking exception: the moment a price drops to exactly zero, people's judgment shifts in a way that ordinary discounting cannot explain. In a well-known laboratory experiment, participants chose between two chocolates, one of higher quality priced at a small fee and one of lower quality offered for free. When both prices were merely reduced by the same amount, most participants still preferred the higher-quality option. Yet once the cheaper chocolate's price was lowered to zero, the majority abruptly switched their preference, even though the price gap between the two options had not actually changed. Researchers explain this reversal by noting that _______________.

Long before humans learned to drill for oil, microorganisms had already mastered the art of converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into stored chemical energy. Modern biofuel research borrows this ability, cultivating algae or engineered bacteria in large tanks where they can be coaxed into producing oils and sugars that can be refined into fuel usable in existing engines. _______________. Engineers have also learned to tinker with the metabolic pathways of these organisms, boosting oil yield far beyond what any wild strain would naturally produce on its own. Despite this progress, producing biofuel at a cost competitive with fossil fuel remains difficult, since harvesting and processing the organisms consumes a substantial share of the energy the fuel itself will eventually provide.

Imagine two travelers preparing for the same trip: one refuses to fly after watching news coverage of a recent plane crash, while the other books a flight without hesitation. (A) This tendency, in which people estimate how likely an event is based on how easily examples come to mind rather than on actual data, quietly shapes countless everyday decisions. (B) Statistically, air travel remains far safer than driving the same distance by car, yet vivid, emotionally charged images tend to dominate human judgment more powerfully than dry statistics ever could. (C) News broadcasts that repeatedly feature rare disasters can leave viewers convinced that such events are common, even though official records clearly show the opposite. Advertisers and politicians alike exploit this pattern, knowing that a single striking anecdote often persuades audiences more effectively than pages of careful statistics ever manage to. Recognizing why memorable examples overshadow objective probability therefore matters, both for making sound personal choices and for noticing when public fear has drifted far from measurable reality.

The secret lies not in the cotton plant itself but in a borrowed piece of bacterial DNA. A cotton plant that manufactures its own insecticide sounds like science fiction, yet it has been growing in fields around the world for decades. ( ① ) Scientists achieved this by isolating a gene from a soil bacterium that produces a protein toxic to specific insect pests but harmless to humans. ( ② ) That gene is then inserted into the plant's own genome so that every cell manufactures the protective protein. ( ③ ) Other genetically modified crops carry a gene that allows them to survive direct exposure to a particular herbicide, letting farmers spray a field to kill weeds without harming the crop growing among them. ( ④ ) Supporters point to yield increases and reduced pesticide spraying documented across millions of hectares, while critics worry about weeds and insects evolving resistance to these built-in defenses over time, much as bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics. ( ⑤ ) Regulatory agencies in most countries now require extensive testing before a genetically modified crop reaches the market, evaluating everything from its nutritional content to its potential effects on nearby ecosystems.

A struggling artist may judge success not against neighbors but against celebrated painters in art history, a comparison that can inspire ambition or, just as easily, breed persistent dissatisfaction. 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. ( ① ) This group need not be one to which a person actually belongs. ( ② ) 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. ( ③ ) 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. ( ④ ) This counterintuitive finding demonstrates that satisfaction depends less on objective circumstances than on the group against which those circumstances are measured. ( ⑤ )

주어진 문장: In simple terms, this process prevents carbon dioxide from ever reaching the atmosphere in the first place. As efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions intensify, industries unable to eliminate carbon dioxide from their processes have turned to a technology known as carbon capture and storage. ① This technology involves separating carbon dioxide from the exhaust of power plants before it is released into the atmosphere, then transporting the captured gas for underground injection. ② Once injected into porous rock formations, the gas is trapped beneath layers of impermeable rock that prevent it from escaping into the air. Proponents argue that carbon capture and storage functions as a bridge technology, allowing heavy industries to keep operating while more sustainable alternatives are developed. ③ For instance, cement and steel production, both of which release carbon dioxide as an unavoidable byproduct of chemical reactions, are considered prime candidates for this approach. ④ However, critics contend that the technology remains prohibitively expensive and that building pipelines requires investments few companies make voluntarily. ⑤ Despite such concerns, many governments continue funding pilot projects, convinced that this technology will play an indispensable role in reaching emission targets. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤