영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Facing a shortage of caregivers and a rapidly aging population, several countries have begun ①deploying robots designed to remind elderly residents to take medication, monitor for falls, and even offer simple conversation throughout the day. Early trials show that many residents report ②reduced loneliness, particularly when a robot's presence allows an overworked human staff member to spend a few extra minutes with each patient rather than ③rushing between rooms. Critics, however, worry that this framing quietly shifts the goal of care: instead of asking how technology can support human connection, institutions may come to treat a robot's companionship as an acceptable substitute for it, especially in facilities already ④struggle with tight budgets. Advocates for the elderly argue that robots should be evaluated strictly as tools that free up human time for human contact, never as a lower-cost replacement for the contact itself, which ⑤remains irreplaceable.

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. This group ①need not be one to which a person actually belongs. A struggling artist may judge success not against neighbors but against celebrated painters in art history, a comparison ②that can inspire ambition or, just as easily, breed persistent dissatisfaction. Sociologists distinguish between normative reference groups, which shape a person's values and behavior, and comparative reference groups, ③which merely provide a benchmark for self-assessment. 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, because the latter could see colleagues ④advance while they themselves ⑤lagging behind.

Social unrest does not always emerge from the poorest conditions; it frequently erupts when circumstances ①are improving but not quickly enough to satisfy rising expectations. This paradox lies at the heart of relative deprivation theory, which ②holds that discontent arises less from objective hardship than from a perceived gap between what people expect and what they actually receive. Political scientist Ted Gurr illustrated the pattern with what is often called the J-curve: revolutions tend to follow a period of sustained improvement that is then followed by a sudden reversal, ③left citizens who had grown accustomed to progress feeling suddenly cheated of gains they had come to regard as their due. Because the theory centers on perception rather than raw statistics, it helps explain why relatively prosperous societies can experience intense protest while societies ④mired in long-standing poverty sometimes remain comparatively quiet, ⑤having adjusted their expectations to match a bleak and unchanging reality.

As more schools shift toward digital textbooks and online assignments, a student without reliable internet access at home faces a disadvantage that has little to do with talent or effort. During recent years, this gap became impossible to ignore, as families in rural areas or low-income neighborhoods ①struggled to complete schoolwork that assumed a stable connection and a personal device. Some policymakers initially treated internet access as a convenience, comparable to cable television, rather than as infrastructure ②essential to modern life. That assumption is increasingly ③reconsidering, particularly as more essential services, from job applications to medical appointments, move online by default. Closing this divide will require more than simply distributing devices; it will demand sustained investment in the physical networks ④that carry information into every home, ⑤regardless of income or location.

As solar and wind power expand rapidly across national grids, engineers face a challenge that ①receive far less public attention than the construction of the generating facilities themselves. Unlike conventional power plants, which can adjust their output to match demand at almost any moment, solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity only when sunlight or wind is available, ②producing supply that fluctuates constantly. One proposed solution involves large-scale battery storage systems, ③which absorb surplus electricity generated during periods of high output and release it later when generation declines. Grid operators must therefore invest in infrastructure capable of ④accommodating this variability, rather than assuming renewable sources can simply replace fossil fuels without adjustment. Without such investment, integrating renewable energy could paradoxically undermine the very reliability that modern electricity grids are ⑤expected to provide.

Consider a large heap containing ten thousand grains of sand. Nearly everyone agrees that removing a single grain from such a heap leaves 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 ②grows to a single lonely grain, or even to no grains at all, and logic alone seems to force us to accept that this final result still counts as a heap. Something has clearly ①gone wrong along the way, since no reasonable person would call one grain of sand a heap, but pinpointing exactly which single removal transformed a heap into a non-heap seems ③impossible. The puzzle exposes a deep discomfort with vague terms like "heap," "tall," or "bald," concepts that seem to admit no sharp ④boundary yet are used confidently in everyday language. Some philosophers conclude that classical logic itself may need to be ⑤revised to accommodate the genuine vagueness built into ordinary human language.

Imagine a teleportation device that scans every atom in your body, transmits that information to a distant station, and reconstructs an exact physical duplicate there, while destroying the original body in the process. From the traveler's point of view, stepping into the machine and stepping out on the other side would feel utterly ①seamless, complete with continuous memories and a sense of having simply walked through a door. Philosophers, however, are troubled by a version of the same device that malfunctions: instead of destroying the original, it leaves the original body intact while still creating a perfect duplicate elsewhere. Now two people exist, each with ②identical memories and an equally strong claim to being the original traveler, and there is ③a clear and principled way to say that one of them is the real continuation of the person who entered the machine. This malfunction reveals that memory and psychological continuity alone cannot fully ④settle what personal identity actually requires, a puzzle that remains ⑤unresolved to this day.

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. Within cohesive committees, boards, and advisory councils, members often prioritize consensus and group harmony over a rigorous evaluation of alternatives, ①silencing doubts rather than risking the discomfort of dissent. Janis identified several warning signs, including an illusion of invulnerability that leads a group to ②underestimate risk, pressure on dissenters to fall in line, and self-appointed mindguards who ③shield the group from information that might disrupt its confidence. Sociologists extend this analysis beyond small committees, noting that entire organizations can develop cultures that ④punish conformity and reward employees who raise inconvenient questions. Historical inquiries into policy failures frequently reveal that critical information existed within the organization but never reached decision makers, because no one felt ⑤safe enough to voice it aloud.

Sociologist Karl Mannheim argued that individuals who come of age during the same historical period tend to share a distinctive outlook shaped by the events, technologies, and crises that defined their formative years, a phenomenon he called a generational unit. Because each generation absorbs its foundational assumptions during adolescence and early adulthood, later generations raised amid different circumstances often develop noticeably different values regarding work, authority, and communication, even within the same family. This divergence produces what is commonly called a generational gap, most visible when older members of a household interpret a younger relative's habits as a rejection of tradition rather than _______________. Mannheim cautioned against viewing either generation as simply right or wrong.

As cities have expanded across landscapes once covered with absorbent soil, impervious surfaces have turned stormwater from a resource that recharges groundwater into a hazard that floods streets and carries pollutants into waterways. Green infrastructure, which mimics the hydrological functions that natural landscapes once performed, offers planners _______________. Rain gardens, shallow depressions planted with deep-rooted vegetation, are designed to capture runoff from rooftops, allowing it to filter slowly through soil before reaching underground aquifers. Permeable pavement, made of porous materials that let water pass directly through, serves a similar purpose along sidewalks, where asphalt would remain impenetrable. For example, cities that replaced pavement with permeable alternatives have reported notable reductions in flooding during storms that once overwhelmed sewers. However, engineers caution that green infrastructure cannot entirely replace conventional pipes in dense cores, where heavy runoff still requires structural reinforcement. Consequently, municipalities now regard green and gray infrastructure as complementary systems, each compensating for the other's limitations.