영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

The human gut hosts trillions of microorganisms ①whose combined genetic material outnumbers that of the human genome itself many times over. Once dismissed as passive hitchhikers, these bacteria are now understood ②to actively shape digestion, regulate immune responses, and even influence the production of chemicals that affect mood and behavior. A microbiome disrupted by antibiotics, poor diet, or chronic stress can leave the gut lining more permeable than it should be, ③allowing substances to leak into the bloodstream that would normally stay contained. Researchers studying this connection have found that transplanting gut bacteria from a healthy donor into a patient can, in some cases, relieve symptoms of certain digestive disorders that conventional medication ④had failed to treat. Still, scientists caution that the microbiome varies enormously between individuals, which means a treatment that restores balance in one person's gut may ⑤does little for someone else's.

Labeling theory approaches deviance not as a fixed property of certain acts, but as a social process ①created when powerful groups attach a negative label to a person's behavior. According to this view, nearly everyone breaks minor rules at some point, yet only some individuals ②are singled out, caught, and formally branded as delinquents, criminals, or troublemakers. Sociologist Howard Becker argued that this label often becomes what he called a master status, a single identity that ③overshadow every other trait a person has and shapes how others treat them from that point onward. Once labeled, an individual may find legitimate opportunities ④closing off, pushing them toward the very community of offenders that the label predicted they would join. Critics of harsh punitive policies frequently invoke labeling theory to argue that stigmatizing young offenders may ⑤entrench criminal identities rather than correct behavior.

A rational approach to decision-making dictates that only future costs and benefits should influence a choice, since resources already spent ①cannot be recovered regardless of what is decided next. In practice, however, people routinely allow such irrecoverable expenditures, known as sunk costs, ②to shape their subsequent decisions, a pattern referred to as the sunk cost fallacy. A moviegoer who finds a film thoroughly disappointing after the first thirty minutes will often remain in the theater until the credits roll, ③reasoning that leaving early would somehow waste the money already spent on the ticket. Organizations exhibit the same fallacy on a larger scale: a company that ④have invested heavily in a failing project frequently continues funding it, arguing that abandoning the project now would render the prior investment meaningless. Yet continuing to invest in a venture destined to fail merely adds new losses to old ones, ⑤compounding the very waste the decision-makers hoped to avoid.

Sociologist William Ogburn observed that when a society undergoes technological change, its material culture, meaning tools and inventions, tends ①to advance faster than its nonmaterial culture, meaning norms, laws, and values. He termed the resulting gap cultural lag, ②describing the friction that appears when institutions have not yet caught up with new technological realities. The rise of the automobile, for instance, ③transforming daily mobility long before traffic laws, insurance systems, and urban planning fully adapted to the risks it introduced. A contemporary example can be found in genetic testing, which now ④allows individuals to learn detailed information about inherited disease risk. Cultural lag theory reminds us that technological progress is not automatically matched by social progress, and that the resulting gap can produce confusion until laws and customs eventually ⑤adjust to new material conditions.

Consider a student who genuinely intends to study for tomorrow's exam yet, when the evening actually arrives, chooses to watch another episode of a favorite show instead, promising herself she will surely study harder next week. This pattern, in which the pull of an immediate pleasure overwhelms the value of a distant benefit, appears again and again across ordinary life, from postponed exercise to delayed savings. People do not necessarily fail to understand that the future reward matters more; rather, _______________. Behavioral economists note that this preference weakens considerably once both options are pushed into the future, which is why planning a diet starting next month feels effortless compared with skipping dessert tonight.

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 known as ethnocentrism. Cultural relativism emerged as a corrective principle, holding that a society's practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than measured against an outside standard presumed to be universal. Cultural relativism transformed fields ranging from anthropology to international development, encouraging researchers to suspend quick judgment and seek local meaning before drawing conclusions. Critics caution, however, that _______________.

Loss aversion does not only influence individual financial choices; it also shapes how information is presented and interpreted in everyday transactions, a phenomenon that marketers and policymakers have learned to exploit deliberately. (A) For example, a retailer who frames a price reduction as "avoid losing a $10 discount by ordering today" typically generates a stronger customer response than one who simply advertises "get a $10 discount," even though both messages describe an identical saving. (B) In other words, the manner in which a choice is presented can activate the same psychological aversion to loss that governs decisions about resources already possessed, meaning that framing itself carries real economic weight. (C) This effect is not confined to retail settings, however; negotiators, too, often treat concessions as losses rather than as steps toward mutual gain, which makes compromise feel more costly than it objectively is.

In the late nineteenth century, the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus undertook a rigorous investigation of forgetting by serving as his own experimental subject. He memorized thousands of meaningless three-letter syllables so that prior knowledge could not skew his results. (A) Ebbinghaus further found that distributing study sessions across several days produced better retention than cramming the same repetition into one sitting. This finding, now central to modern learning theory, implies that revisiting material shortly before it would otherwise be forgotten interrupts the decline of the forgetting curve. (B) After learning each list to perfection, he tested his retention at intervals ranging from twenty minutes to a month later. He recorded how many repetitions were required to relearn the material each time. (C) The resulting curve revealed a consistent pattern. Forgetting proceeds rapidly during the initial hours following learning, then gradually decelerates until the rate of loss becomes almost imperceptible. Roughly half of the acquired information vanished within the first hour alone. Yet whatever survived that initial plunge tended to persist for much longer periods.

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks that used to require human hands. (A) However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, giving workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed much faster. (B) Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one had predicted. (C) A factory worker displaced this year, therefore, cannot simply wait for a new industry to emerge decades from now.

Robert Merton refined this framework by distinguishing manifest functions, the intended and openly recognized consequences of a social practice, from latent functions, unintended consequences that nonetheless help sustain the system, such as schools serving not only to educate but also to provide childcare that allows parents to work. Structural functionalism approaches society as a complex system of interdependent parts, each contributing to the overall stability and smooth operation of the whole, much as organs contribute to the survival of a biological body. ( ① ) Sociologist Talcott Parsons argued that institutions such as the family, education, religion, and government each perform necessary functions, socializing new members and transmitting values. ( ② ) Removing or weakening any one institution, in his view, threatens the equilibrium of the entire system. ( ③ ) Critics have long charged that functionalism, by emphasizing stability and equilibrium, struggles to explain social conflict and rapid change. ( ④ ) It tends to interpret persistent inequality as somehow functional for society rather than as a problem requiring correction. ( ⑤ )