영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Economists traditionally measured a community's wealth in terms of factories, income, or infrastructure, yet sociologists increasingly point to a less ①visible resource: social capital, the networks of trust and reciprocity that allow people to cooperate for mutual benefit. Robert Putnam popularized the concept by documenting a ②decline in civic participation, noting that fewer Americans joined bowling leagues, parent associations, or local clubs even as bowling itself remained popular. Communities rich in social capital tend to enjoy ③lower crime and more effective local government, because neighbors who know and trust one another can coordinate informally without relying entirely on formal institutions. However, social capital is not uniformly beneficial; tightly bonded networks can also ④welcome outsiders and reinforce existing inequality. For this reason, researchers increasingly distinguish between bonding capital and bridging capital, which ⑤connects otherwise separate communities.

Imagine standing at a crowded party where dozens of conversations blend into a wall of noise, yet you ①effortlessly track the words of the friend beside you. Curiously, if someone across the room utters your name, your attention snaps toward that voice almost ②instantly. This happens even though you had not consciously been listening to that conversation at all. This phenomenon, known as the cocktail party effect, reveals that selective attention does not simply block out every unattended sound. Early theorists such as Donald Broadbent proposed that unattended information is ③filtered out entirely before reaching awareness. Yet the fact that a person's own name can break through this filter ④contradicts such a rigid model. Anne Treisman later refined this account, suggesting that unattended channels are merely attenuated rather than eliminated altogether. Especially meaningful stimuli, including one's own name, can still surpass the threshold of conscious recognition. This refinement suggests that attention operates less like a gate and more like a dimmer switch, ⑤ignoring the salience of competing streams of information.

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 _______________. This tendency to judge economic well-being by nominal 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 satisfies employees more effectively than an explanation about inflation could.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu introduced the concept of habitus to describe the deeply ingrained dispositions, tastes, and ways of perceiving the world that individuals absorb through years of socialization within a particular social class. (B) Bourdieu argued that habitus allows privilege to reproduce itself across generations without any explicit coercion, since children raised in advantaged households absorb the tastes that elite schools implicitly reward. (A) Habitus operates below conscious awareness, so that a person's habitus feels entirely natural even though it was produced by specific social conditions. (C) Because habitus feels like personal identity rather than social conditioning, individuals rarely recognize how thoroughly their preferences have been shaped by class position.

As private companies develop the technology to mine asteroids for rare metals and water, a legal question once confined to science fiction has suddenly become urgent: who, if anyone, owns the resources of outer space? (A) Some governments have already passed domestic laws granting their own companies rights to material mined in space, a move other nations view as a unilateral attempt to settle a shared question. (B) 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. (C) Supporters of space mining argue that new resources could ease shortages on Earth, while critics warn that treating space as an open frontier for extraction risks repeating past mistakes.

A biosensor works by pairing a biological component, such as an enzyme or antibody, with an electronic device that converts a biological reaction into a signal a computer can read. (A) Engineers are now racing to extend the same principle to detect subtler targets, from cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream to trace contaminants in drinking water, though the central challenge remains doing so reliably outside a controlled laboratory. (B) When the target molecule, whether glucose in blood or a trace of a pathogen, binds to the biological component, it triggers a small measurable change that the device translates into a readable number. (C) This design has already transformed diabetes management, letting patients monitor blood sugar continuously through a small sensor worn under the skin rather than pricking a finger several times a day.

Hospitals are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence tools that can scan medical images and flag potential tumors faster than experienced radiologists. (A) The doctor may argue that they simply trusted a tool the hospital required them to use, while the hospital may blame the software company instead. (B) Yet the growing reliance on these tools raises an uncomfortable legal question: when an AI system misses a diagnosis, who is responsible? (C) Until legal systems clarify this chain of responsibility, patients harmed by an algorithmic error may find themselves with no clear party to hold accountable.

Janis identified several warning signs, including an illusion of invulnerability that leads a group to underestimate risk, pressure on dissenters to fall in line, and self-appointed mindguards who shield the group from information that might disrupt its confidence. Even highly capable individuals can make disastrous collective decisions once they are absorbed into a tightly knit group, a phenomenon psychologist Irving Janis termed groupthink. ( ① ) Within cohesive committees, boards, and advisory councils, members often prioritize consensus and group harmony over a rigorous evaluation of alternatives, silencing doubts rather than risking the discomfort of dissent. ( ② ) Sociologists extend this analysis beyond small committees, noting that entire organizations can develop cultures that reward conformity and punish employees who raise inconvenient questions. ( ③ ) Historical inquiries into policy failures and corporate disasters frequently reveal that critical information existed within the organization but never reached decision makers. ( ④ ) This was not because it was hidden, but because no one felt safe enough to voice it aloud. ( ⑤ )

In other words, no single app may intend to expose such sensitive information, but the combination of many small pieces can. Every time a smartphone connects to a cell tower or a Wi-Fi network, it quietly records a data point that can later be pieced together into a detailed map of where its owner has been. ( ① ) Most users agree to this tracking without reading the fine print, assuming that a single company's database poses little threat. ( ② ) The real danger, however, emerges when location data from multiple sources is combined. ( ③ ) A pattern that reveals a person's home, workplace, and daily route can expose far more than any single app ever intended to share, including medical visits or private relationships. ( ④ ) Companies often argue that anonymized data cannot be traced back to individuals, yet researchers have repeatedly shown otherwise. ( ⑤ )

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.