영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Blockchain technology was originally promoted as a way ①to remove the need for trusted middlemen, allowing strangers to exchange value directly and verify transactions through a shared, tamper-resistant ledger rather than through a bank or government agency. In theory, this design ②distributes power away from any single institution and toward the network as a whole. In practice, however, a small number of large players have come to dominate many blockchain networks, ③controlled enough computing power or currency to influence outcomes that were supposed to be decided collectively. Critics note a further irony: when something goes wrong, there is often no institution left ④to appeal to, since the entire system was designed precisely to eliminate that kind of central authority. Whether decentralization can survive this concentration of power ⑤remains one of the technology's most unresolved questions.

When individuals face uncertainty about how to behave, they frequently look to the actions of others for guidance, ①assuming that a behavior adopted by many people is more likely to be correct or appropriate than one adopted by few, a tendency known as social proof. This reliance on collective behavior can be remarkably efficient, since it allows individuals ②to benefit from the accumulated judgment of a crowd without having to gather and evaluate every relevant fact themselves. However, social proof can also lead entire groups astray when the initial signal that ③trigger imitation is itself unreliable or coincidental. A restaurant that happens to attract a long line early in the evening may continue attracting customers throughout the night simply because passersby ④interpret the queue as evidence of superior quality. Financial markets exhibit an analogous pattern: investors who observe others buying a particular asset often join the buying themselves, ⑤reasoning that so many participants cannot all be mistaken.

Students are frequently told that where they study makes little difference, ①provided that they put in enough hours. Cognitive research on memory retrieval, however, suggests that this advice oversimplifies an important process. According to the encoding specificity principle, ②information becomes intertwined with the context in which it was originally learned. Cues present during encoding therefore facilitate retrieval far more effectively than cues encountered elsewhere. A striking demonstration involved ③divers who memorized word lists either underwater or on dry land. When tested later, divers recalled substantially more words ④if the testing environment matched the original learning environment. This held true regardless of which environment that happened to be. This finding implies that reviewing material exclusively in a quiet bedroom may not adequately prepare a student for the noisy atmosphere of an actual examination hall. Rather than assuming that memorization is a context-free process, students ought to consider deliberately varying study locations and conditions. Doing so would ensure that retrieval cues ⑤remains available regardless of how a future test is administered.

When people estimate the value of an unfamiliar product, they rarely rely on objective calculation alone; instead, they anchor their judgment to whatever numerical reference happens to be presented first, however ①arbitrary that number may be. This phenomenon exerts a ②disproportionate influence on price perception precisely because initial figures function as a kind of cognitive gravity that subsequent estimates struggle to escape. A shopper who first sees a jacket listed at $300 before it is marked down to $150 will likely judge the discounted price as an excellent ③bargain, regardless of whether $150 actually reflects the jacket's true worth. Retailers, well aware of this bias, frequently display a ④deflated "original price" beside a discounted one, not because the higher figure is meaningful, but because it recalibrates customers' expectations. Even professionals are not immune: negotiators who open with an extreme initial offer often secure more ⑤favorable final terms than those who begin with a moderate one.

Economists traditionally measured a community's wealth in terms of factories, income, or infrastructure, yet sociologists increasingly point to a less visible 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 decline in civic participation, a trend he captured in the phrase bowling alone. Communities rich in social capital tend to enjoy lower crime and more effective local government, because neighbors who know and trust one another can coordinate informally without relying entirely on formal institutions. However, _______________. For this reason, researchers increasingly distinguish between bonding capital, which strengthens ties within a single group, and bridging capital, which connects otherwise separate communities.

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.

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. 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. This tendency, in which people estimate how likely an event is based on _______________, quietly shapes countless everyday decisions. 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.

The role of emotion in decision-making carries important implications for how financial advice should be delivered. (A) An advisor who presents only statistical projections and probability distributions, however accurate, may fail to help a client translate that information into a decision that feels manageable rather than overwhelming. (B) Effective financial communication, therefore, often pairs quantitative analysis with reassurance calibrated to the client's emotional state, particularly during periods of market turbulence. (C) Clients facing significant financial decisions are rarely persuaded by numbers alone, since anxiety about an uncertain outcome can override even a clear rational case for a particular course of action.

Every time an antibiotic kills off a population of bacteria, a handful of cells carrying a random mutation that resists the drug are left behind to multiply without competition. (A) Repeated over decades, across hospitals, farms, and households worldwide, this simple process of natural selection has produced strains of bacteria that survive treatments once considered reliably effective. (B) The pharmaceutical industry, meanwhile, has slowed the pace at which new antibiotics reach the market, since a drug meant to be taken for only a week or two rarely earns back the enormous cost of developing it. (C) Researchers are therefore searching in unconventional places, screening soil microbes and even genetic databases for new molecules, and some have also revived an older approach using viruses that infect only bacteria to hunt down resistant strains.

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. (C) 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. (A) Because each generation absorbs its foundational assumptions during adolescence and early adulthood, later generations raised amid different circumstances often develop noticeably different values, even within the same family. (B) Mannheim cautioned against viewing either generation as simply right or wrong, insisting instead that each generation's worldview reflects a coherent response to the particular historical conditions it encountered.