영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

When consumers compare two products and assume that the one ①labeled "eco-friendly" is automatically the more sustainable choice, they often overlook the complexity involved in verifying such a claim. Life cycle assessment, commonly abbreviated as LCA, is a systematic method ②developed to evaluate the environmental impact of a product across every stage of its existence. This method examines raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal, ③compiling data on energy consumption and emissions generated at each stage. By tracing a product from its origin to its disposal, this approach reveals impacts that might otherwise remain hidden from consumers who ④sees only the finished item on a shelf. Without ⑤accounting for these earlier stages, a superficial comparison could mistakenly present the vehicle as entirely emission-free.

A cotton plant that manufactures its own insecticide sounds like science fiction, yet it has been ①growing in fields around the world for decades. Scientists achieved this by isolating a gene from a soil bacterium that produces a protein toxic to specific insect pests but harmless to humans, then ②inserting that gene into the plant's own genome so that every cell manufactures the protective protein. Other genetically modified crops carry a gene that allows them ③survive direct exposure to a particular herbicide, letting farmers spray a field to kill weeds without harming the crop growing among them. Supporters point to yield increases and reduced pesticide spraying documented across millions of hectares, while critics worry about weeds and insects ④evolving resistance to these built-in defenses over time, much as bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics. Regulatory agencies in most countries now require extensive testing before a genetically modified crop reaches the market, ⑤evaluating everything from its nutritional content to its potential effects on nearby ecosystems.

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 ①disruptive 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. Anthropologist Franz Boas argued that no culture possesses an inherently ②superior set of values, and that apparent oddities, once examined closely, typically serve ③coherent functions within their own social systems. Cultural relativism transformed fields ranging from anthropology to international development, encouraging researchers to ④suspend quick judgment and seek local meaning before drawing conclusions. Critics caution, however, that taken to an extreme, the principle risks excusing practices that cause ⑤genuine harm.

Conventional economic wisdom holds that more options are always preferable to fewer. Empirical research on consumer behavior, however, complicates this assumption considerably. When shoppers are presented with an extensive array of choices, they frequently experience heightened anxiety about making the wrong selection and, paradoxically, become less likely to make any purchase or decision at all. Businesses that recognize this dynamic have begun deliberately curating smaller, carefully selected assortments, betting that ___________ can sometimes generate more sales and greater customer satisfaction than abundance.

Imagine a man locked inside a room who does not understand a single word of Chinese, yet who possesses a giant rulebook written entirely in English. Slips of paper covered with Chinese characters are passed in through a slot, and by following the rulebook's instructions step by step, he produces replies that appear fluent to anyone outside. From the perspective of a native speaker reading the responses, the room seems to understand Chinese perfectly. Yet the man inside understands nothing at all; he is merely manipulating shapes according to formal rules, without grasping their meaning. This scenario was designed to challenge the assumption that a computer running a sophisticated program truly understands language simply because it produces convincing output. Passing every external test of intelligence, the argument suggests, is not the same as possessing genuine understanding, since _______________.

Financial markets occasionally experience episodes in which asset prices rise far beyond any level that careful analysis of underlying fundamentals could justify, a phenomenon commonly attributed to herd psychology. During such episodes, individual investors often conclude that continuing to buy is reasonable simply because so many others are doing the same, rather than because any independent evaluation supports the purchase. Understanding market bubbles thus requires looking beyond conventional economic fundamentals toward the ___________ that binds individual investors into a single, momentum-driven crowd.

Long before cognitive scientists possessed the tools to observe the brain directly, Donald Broadbent proposed an influential model suggesting that the human capacity to process incoming sensory information is constrained by a structural bottleneck through which only a single stream of input can pass at any given instant. (A) This basic bottleneck principle continues to inform contemporary explanations of why multitasking so reliably degrades performance on demanding tasks. (B) According to this filter theory, multiple channels of stimulation, such as competing voices in a crowded room, are initially registered at a shallow, physical level, but only one channel is selected for further, meaning-based analysis while the rest are blocked from advancing beyond that early filter. (C) Although later researchers challenged the rigidity of this early selection mechanism, pointing to instances in which unattended information, such as one's own name, nevertheless breaks through and captures awareness, the core insight that attention imposes a genuine processing limit rather than a mere matter of willpower has remained remarkably durable.

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. (C) 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. (A) Sociologists distinguish between normative reference groups, which shape a person's values and behavior, and comparative reference groups, which merely provide a benchmark for self-assessment. (B) This counterintuitive finding demonstrates that satisfaction depends less on objective circumstances than on the group against which those circumstances are measured.

This admission, however, is precisely what the sunk cost fallacy makes so difficult to accept. Consider a construction firm that has spent several years and a substantial budget building a bridge, only to discover partway through that a cheaper and safer alternative route has since become available. ( ① ) A purely forward-looking analysis would compare the remaining cost of finishing the original bridge against the total cost of switching to the new route, ignoring whatever has already been spent. ( ② ) If the new route is genuinely cheaper going forward, the rational choice is to abandon the original project regardless of how much money it has already consumed. ( ③ ) Abandoning the project, however, requires the firm's leadership to publicly acknowledge that a significant portion of the original investment produced no lasting value. ( ④ ) As a result, firms often continue projects long after the numbers clearly favor stopping, simply to avoid confronting this uncomfortable truth. ( ⑤ ) The bridge, in such cases, becomes less a matter of engineering than a monument to the difficulty of admitting a costly mistake.

The software company, in turn, may argue that no algorithm can be expected to be perfect. Hospitals are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence tools that can scan medical images and flag potential tumors faster than experienced radiologists. ( ① ) When an AI system misses a diagnosis that a human doctor would likely have caught, responsibility becomes difficult to assign. ( ② ) The doctor may argue that they simply trusted a tool the hospital required them to use. ( ③ ) The hospital, meanwhile, may argue that the software company guaranteed its accuracy. ( ④ ) Until legal systems clarify this chain of responsibility, patients harmed by an algorithmic error may find themselves with no clear party to hold accountable. ( ⑤ )