영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

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 ①do exactly that under the right conditions. Unlike conventional plastic, derived almost entirely from petroleum, many bioplastics are ②synthesized 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. Not every bioplastic biodegrades quickly, however, and some marketed as eco-friendly break down only in industrial composting facilities ③that reach conditions rarely found in a backyard compost heap or the open ocean. Critics point out that growing crops for bioplastic production can compete with food crops for farmland and water, ④complicating the assumption that a biological origin automatically makes a material more sustainable. Researchers are now exploring bioplastics made from agricultural waste and algae instead of dedicated crops, hoping to ⑤sidestepping this competition for land while preserving the benefits that first made bioplastics appealing.

Time travel to the past has long fascinated physicists and philosophers alike, but it also ①generates a famously troubling contradiction. Suppose a traveler journeyed backward in time and, through some combination of accident and intention, ②prevented their own grandfather from ever meeting their grandmother. If the grandfather never had children, the traveler themselves would never have been born, which means the traveler could never ③existed to make the trip in the first place. Yet if the traveler never made the trip, the grandfather would have survived to meet the grandmother after all, ④allowing the traveler to be born and eventually travel back in time. The story therefore loops endlessly, undermining itself at every turn rather than ⑤settling into any stable outcome.

Extended producer responsibility, a policy requiring manufacturers to bear responsibility for their products even after use, has been adopted by governments seeking to ①increase landfill waste. Under such schemes, companies must ②finance the collection and recycling of goods once consumers discard them, rather than leaving municipalities to absorb the cost. Advocates maintain that shifting this burden onto producers creates a powerful incentive to design products that are more ③durable, easily disassembled, and readily recyclable from the outset. Critics counter that the policy, whatever its theoretical merits, often fails to reduce waste meaningfully unless paired with ④rigorous enforcement and transparent reporting requirements. For instance, some manufacturers merely pass the added cost of compliance on to consumers, without making substantive changes to how products are designed. In contrast, jurisdictions that combine producer responsibility with strict eco-design standards and independent audits tend to witness ⑤genuine improvements in recyclability.

A printer that once produced only plastic prototypes can now deposit living cells layer by layer to build a structure that begins to ①resemble actual tissue. Bioprinting adapts the logic of conventional 3D printing, replacing plastic filament with a ②specialized ink made of living cells suspended in a gel that supports their survival while the shape sets. Printing a flat patch of skin or a simple blood vessel has already moved from laboratory curiosity to early clinical testing, since these tissues are thin enough for nutrients to reach every cell by ③diffusion. Printing a solid organ such as a kidney remains a far greater challenge, because internal cells ④thrive without their own blood supply, and no printer yet exists that can build a network of vessels fast enough to keep them alive. Researchers are therefore focusing on hybrid strategies, printing a rough scaffold and then allowing the tissue to mature and grow its own vasculature over ⑤time.

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. 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. 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 _______________. 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. However, critics contend that the technology remains prohibitively expensive and that building pipelines requires investments few companies make voluntarily. Despite such concerns, many governments continue funding pilot projects, convinced that this technology will play an indispensable role in reaching emission targets.

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt devised a scenario to challenge a long-held assumption about moral responsibility: that a person can be blamed for an action only if they could genuinely have done otherwise. Imagine a man named Black who secretly implants a device in another man's brain, ready to force a particular decision if the second man shows any sign of choosing differently. The second man, however, decides entirely on his own to perform the very action Black wanted, and the device never activates at all. Black's hidden mechanism made it impossible for the man to have chosen otherwise, yet most people still consider him fully responsible for what he freely decided to do. Frankfurt used this scenario to argue that _______________.

Philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed the panopticon, a prison structure in which a central watchtower allows a single guard to observe every cell, while inmates can never determine whether they are actually being watched at any given moment. French theorist Michel Foucault later transformed this architectural idea into a broader theory of power, arguing that the mere possibility of being observed is often sufficient to produce obedient behavior, since _______________. Foucault extended this logic beyond prisons to schools, hospitals, and workplaces, suggesting that modern institutions increasingly rely on continuous, often invisible observation rather than physical force to maintain order.

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. He concluded that both crises share a common feature, the collapse of shared norms that once told individuals what to expect and how to behave. 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, such as wealth, while denying many people the legitimate means to achieve them. Faced with this gap between aspiration and opportunity, _______________. Anomie theory therefore suggests that crime is less a product of individual failure than of structural imbalance within society itself.

John Rawls proposed an unusual thought experiment to determine what principles of justice a society ought to adopt. (A) Imagine a group of rational people gathered to design the basic rules of their future society, but placed behind what he called a veil of ignorance, unaware of their own race, gender, wealth, or social position. (B) Since no one can predict whether they will be born into privilege or poverty, each person has a strong incentive to choose rules that protect the worst-off members of society. (C) Rawls argued that rational people placed in this position would favor arrangements that guarantee basic liberties for everyone and permit unequal outcomes only when they benefit the least advantaged.

Slips of paper covered with unfamiliar Chinese characters are passed in through a slot in the door, and he answers them by consulting his rulebook line by line. Imagine a man locked inside a room who does not understand a single word of Chinese, yet who possesses a giant rulebook written entirely in English. ( ① ) By matching each incoming symbol to an appropriate outgoing symbol, he produces replies that appear fluent to anyone outside. ( ② ) From the perspective of a native speaker reading the responses, the room seems to understand Chinese perfectly. ( ③ ) Yet the man inside understands nothing at all; he is merely manipulating shapes according to formal rules, without grasping their meaning. ( ④ ) This scenario was designed to challenge the assumption that a computer running a sophisticated program truly understands language simply because it produces convincing output. ( ⑤ ) Passing every external test of intelligence, the argument suggests, is not the same as possessing genuine understanding, since syntax alone can never generate semantics.