영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

When people face a difficult decision, they often weigh not only the expected outcome of each option but also how painful it would feel ①to discover later that a different choice had been better. This anticipation of future regret, rather than the size of the potential loss itself, frequently becomes the dominant factor ②shaping the final decision. Investors, for example, sometimes continue holding a declining stock rather than ③selling it, not because they expect the price to recover, but because selling would force them to confront the possibility ④of having made a clear mistake. Researchers have found that people feel sharper regret over losses that resulted from taking action than over identical losses that resulted from doing nothing, which ⑤help explain why so many individuals default to inaction whenever a decision feels uncertain.

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.

Scientists have long searched for a way to describe, in a single coherent framework, the outer limits within ①which human activity can safely continue without destabilizing the planet's fundamental systems. The concept of planetary boundaries, ②introduced by earth-system researchers, identifies nine interconnected processes, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen pollution, each ③possessing a threshold beyond which abrupt and irreversible change becomes likely. Unlike conventional environmental limits, often defined locally, these boundaries are framed at a planetary scale, ④reflecting the idea that the Earth functions as a single interdependent system rather than a collection of isolated regions. Crossing one boundary, proponents argue, does not merely damage the system involved but can also destabilize others, since climate, oceans, and land are bound together by feedback loops that transmit disturbance across the system. Some philosophers have likened this framework to a ship's safe operating margin, within which passengers may move freely without risking the vessel's stability. Critics, however, contend that the boundaries ⑤is drawn with more confidence than the data can support.

Suppose you meet a quiet, gentle man who speaks softly, tends a small garden, and organizes his bookshelf with meticulous care. 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. This judgment, however, ignores a crucial fact: _______________, 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. Relying on resemblance to a familiar category rather than on underlying numerical proportions leads people to overlook these base rates almost automatically.

Desalination, the process of removing dissolved salts from seawater to produce fresh water, has increasingly been adopted by coastal regions facing chronic water scarcity. Most modern facilities rely on reverse osmosis, a technique in which seawater is forced through membranes whose microscopic pores block salt while letting water molecules pass. Because this method consumes far less energy than the thermal distillation once dominant in the industry, it has become the preferred choice for large-scale plants. Nevertheless, _______________. For instance, the process generates a concentrated byproduct called brine, which, when discharged without adequate dilution, can raise local salinity to levels that harm marine life. Pumping seawater through membranes at high pressure also demands substantial electricity, so plants powered by fossil fuels can worsen the emissions that intensify drought. Therefore, engineers increasingly argue that desalination should be treated not as a stand-alone remedy but as one component of a broader conservation strategy.

Extended producer responsibility, a policy requiring manufacturers to bear responsibility for their products even after use, has been adopted by governments seeking to reduce landfill waste. (A) Critics counter that the policy, whatever its theoretical merits, often fails to reduce waste meaningfully unless paired with rigorous 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. (B) Under such schemes, companies must finance 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 durable, easily disassembled, and readily recyclable from the outset. (C) In contrast, jurisdictions that combine producer responsibility with strict eco-design standards and independent audits tend to witness genuine improvements in recyclability. Therefore, policymakers hoping to harness this approach must resist treating it as self-executing and instead invest in oversight that determines whether producers actually change behavior.

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 unlimited and disposal as if costless. (A) Because such practices lessen dependence on finite raw materials, they reduce the environmental damage caused by mining. Consequently, the circular economy is increasingly regarded as a viable economic strategy that conserves resources for future generations. (B) A circular economy proposes an alternative framework in which materials are kept in continuous use through reuse, repair, and recycling, thereby reducing 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. (C) 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.

Confirmation bias becomes particularly consequential in political discourse, where citizens must evaluate competing claims about complex issues. (A) As a result, exposure to more information does not necessarily produce more accurate beliefs; it can instead deepen existing divisions by giving each side additional material that appears to validate its own position. (B) Voters who favor a particular policy tend to seek out news sources and commentators who share that view, while largely avoiding those who might challenge it. (C) This selective consumption means that two people examining ostensibly the same news environment can end up with radically different, mutually reinforcing interpretations of events.

주어진 문장: This buying and selling of allowances effectively creates a market price for carbon, one that fluctuates according to how difficult reduction proves across different industries. Emissions trading, a market-based mechanism for curbing greenhouse gases, allows governments to set an overall limit on carbon output while letting firms trade permits within that limit. ① Under this system, known as cap-and-trade, companies that cut emissions more cheaply than required can sell surplus allowances to firms facing higher reduction costs. ② Proponents argue that this flexibility lets society reach a given environmental target at the lowest overall cost, since abatement shifts toward whoever can achieve it most economically. ③ Critics, however, contend that trading schemes frequently allocate too many permits, a flaw that has historically depressed carbon prices and blunted incentives to invest in cleaner technology. ④ For example, early phases of several regional markets granted allowances so generously that permit prices collapsed, leaving polluters with little pressure to change their practices. ⑤ Consequently, many economists now advocate combining trading with a price floor, a minimum permit price that keeps the market from collapsing during weak demand, thereby preserving the cost-effectiveness for which trading is valued. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤

주어진 문장: Beyond these practical objections, some conservationists raise a more fundamental theoretical concern about what rewilding is ultimately trying to achieve. Rewilding, a conservation strategy that seeks to restore natural processes with minimal human interference, has gained attention as traditional conservation struggles to halt biodiversity loss. ① Rather than managing landscapes according to a fixed blueprint, rewilding projects often reintroduce key species, such as large predators, whose presence can trigger cascading effects. ② Advocates point to the reintroduction of wolves in certain parks, where predation altered grazing behavior, allowing riverside vegetation to recover and stabilizing soil that had long been eroding. ③ Skeptics, however, warn that rewilding can provoke serious conflict with nearby communities, particularly when predators prey on livestock or restored habitats limit land for agriculture. ④ Moreover, critics argue that restoring landscapes to an imagined pristine state is scientifically dubious, since ecosystems have long been shaped by human activity. ⑤ Compensation programs reimbursing farmers for livestock losses, alongside ecotourism initiatives creating local income, have proven essential to sustaining public support. Ultimately, rewilding succeeds not by removing human influence but by renegotiating the relationship between people and the wild species they must coexist with. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤