영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

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.

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks ①that used to require human hands. Economists have long debated whether this shift destroys jobs or simply ②transforms them. Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one ③had predicted. However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, ④given workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed at a pace that leaves little room for adjustment. For this reason, many economists argue that the real challenge is not the robots themselves, but the speed at which society ⑤is expected to adapt to them.

When a country physician named Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had caught cowpox seemed immune to smallpox, he set in motion a medical revolution without fully ①understanding why it worked. For nearly two centuries afterward, vaccine development proceeded largely by trial and error, weakening or killing a pathogen and testing whether the resulting preparation could train the immune system without causing disease itself. This method produced ②genuine successes, eventually eliminating smallpox worldwide and reducing diseases such as polio and measles, but each new vaccine still required ③seconds of laboratory work with no guarantee of success. Advances in molecular biology eventually allowed researchers to isolate a single protein from a pathogen's surface rather than using the whole organism, producing vaccines with ④fewer side effects and a more predictable safety profile. The most recent shift, toward delivering genetic instructions rather than proteins themselves, represents the latest chapter in a story that began with an eighteenth-century doctor's curiosity about a ⑤puzzling immunity among dairy workers.

For much of the twentieth century, memory researchers assumed that once a memory had been ①consolidated—transformed from a fragile, short-term trace into a stable, long-term representation—it remained essentially fixed, immune to further modification unless the underlying neural circuitry was physically damaged. This assumption, however, was ②overturned by a body of research demonstrating that the act of retrieval itself can ③stabilize a previously consolidated memory, rendering it temporarily susceptible to alteration before it is, in a sense, filed away again. During this narrow window, which typically lasts only a few hours, the memory can be ④strengthened, weakened, or even subtly distorted by new information encountered in the interim, after which it must undergo a second round of stabilization, a process now widely referred to as reconsolidation. Consequently, what we experience as a stable recollection may actually be a continuously ⑤revised construction, reshaped every time it is summoned into conscious awareness and returned to storage.

Traditional industrial systems have relied on a linear model of production, in which raw materials are extracted, transformed into goods, and eventually discarded as waste. This approach treats natural resources as if ①unlimited and disposal as if costless. A circular economy proposes an alternative framework in which materials are kept in continuous use through reuse, repair, and recycling, thereby ②reducing the extraction of virgin resources. Central to this model is the notion that waste, rather than being an inevitable byproduct, can be redesigned as a resource for another process, much as fallen leaves nourish the trees that shed them. For example, manufacturers design products so that components can be disassembled and reused in new items once their original function ends. Some companies also lease equipment instead of selling it outright, retaining responsibility for refurbishment. Because such practices lessen dependence on finite raw materials, they ③increase the environmental damage caused by mining. Consequently, the circular economy is increasingly regarded as a ④viable economic strategy that ⑤conserves resources for future generations.

The discovery of CRISPR gene-editing technology gave scientists a tool precise enough to correct a single mistaken letter in the human genome. Yet editing a gene in a sperm, egg, or early embryo does not simply change one patient; it alters the genetic code passed down to every future generation. Scientific organizations around the world have therefore drawn a careful line, permitting gene editing to treat disease in existing patients while banning any edit that would be inherited by their descendants. Critics worry, however, that _______________.

Biodegradable plastics have been promoted as a promising solution to plastic waste, since they are designed to decompose into natural substances rather than persist for centuries. (A) For example, a bag labeled biodegradable may take years, not the weeks advertised, to break down in a landfill or ocean, where temperature and microbial activity remain low. In addition, when mixed with conventional plastics in recycling streams, they can contaminate the process, weakening the quality of materials produced afterward. (B) Some engineers therefore compare biodegradable plastics to a bridge that leads nowhere unless paired with infrastructure that completes the journey. Ultimately, realizing their genuine potential requires not only technological refinement but also facilities capable of providing the precise conditions decomposition demands. (C) Manufacturers derive these materials from renewable resources such as corn starch, blending them with additives that accelerate microbial breakdown once discarded. However, their environmental benefits are often exaggerated, largely because decomposition depends on specific conditions rarely found outside industrial composting facilities.

Hyperbolic discounting has direct implications for how retirement savings programs ought to be designed. (A) If employees are asked at the moment of hiring whether they wish to increase their contribution rate at a specific point in the future, many agree readily, since the sacrifice feels distant and therefore painless. (B) When that future date eventually arrives, however, the automatic increase proceeds smoothly precisely because the decision was locked in before the immediate discomfort of a smaller paycheck became salient. (C) This design, sometimes described as committing one's future self in advance, effectively exploits the very inconsistency that hyperbolic discounting predicts, turning a psychological weakness into a practical advantage.

Suppose you meet a quiet, gentle man who speaks softly, tends a small garden, and organizes his bookshelf with meticulous care. (A) This judgment, however, ignores a crucial fact: truck drivers vastly outnumber florists in almost every country, which means that, statistically, he is far more likely to belong to the larger group regardless of how well he fits the flower-shop image. (B) Relying on resemblance to a familiar category rather than on underlying numerical proportions, known among researchers as representativeness, leads people to overlook these base rates almost automatically. Even trained professionals, who should know better, often fall into the same trap when a vivid description feels more convincing than plain statistics. Consequently, teaching people to pause and ask how common something actually is, instead of merely how typical it appears, can meaningfully improve the accuracy of everyday predictions and reduce costly errors in judgment. (C) Asked whether he is more likely a florist or a truck driver, most people instinctively choose florist, since his personality matches the stereotype so neatly.

When people recall precisely where they were and what they were doing at the moment they learned of some momentous public event, the resulting memory often feels extraordinarily vivid, as though it had been etched into the mind with photographic precision; researchers have termed such recollections flashbulb memories. (A) Proponents of this concept once argued that the emotional intensity and surprise accompanying such events trigger a distinct neural mechanism that preserves details with unusual fidelity, effectively exempting them from the gradual decay that afflicts ordinary memories. (B) This persistent mismatch between subjective certainty and objective consistency implies that flashbulb memories, far from being flawless recordings, are reconstructed narratives shaped by rehearsal, media exposure, and the passage of time. (C) Subsequent longitudinal studies, however, have complicated this picture considerably: when researchers compared accounts gathered within days of an event to accounts gathered years later, they discovered that details had frequently been altered, omitted, or even fabricated, even though the individuals reporting them expressed unwavering confidence in their accuracy.