영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Biodegradable plastics have been promoted as a promising solution to plastic waste, since they ①are designed to decompose into natural substances rather than persist for centuries. Manufacturers derive these materials from renewable resources such as corn starch, blending them with additives that ②accelerates microbial breakdown once discarded. However, their environmental benefits are often exaggerated, largely because decomposition depends on specific conditions rarely ③found outside industrial composting facilities. 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, ④weakening the quality of materials produced afterward. 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 ⑤providing the precise conditions decomposition demands.

Sociologist Mark Granovetter challenged a common assumption when he found that job seekers were more likely to hear about new opportunities from casual acquaintances than from close friends and family. This finding, published as the strength of weak ties, rests on a structural insight: close friends tend to belong to the same tight social circle and therefore already share most of the same information, whereas casual acquaintances typically move in ①different circles and can act as bridges to information a person would otherwise never encounter. Weak ties, precisely because they connect otherwise ②separate networks, transmit novel information more efficiently than the redundant, overlapping ties within a tightly bonded group. Granovetter's insight has since been applied well beyond job searches, informing research on how innovations ③spread, how political movements recruit new members, and how epidemics travel through a population, suggesting that casual relationships may ④quietly determine access to opportunities that shape an entire career, a conclusion most researchers now consider entirely ⑤implausible.

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt devised a scenario to challenge a long-held ①assumption about moral responsibility: that a person can be blamed for an action only if they could genuinely have done otherwise. Imagine a man named Black who secretly implants a device in another man's brain, ready to force a particular decision if the second man shows any sign of choosing differently. The second man, however, decides entirely on his ②own to perform the very action Black wanted, and the device never activates at all. Black's hidden mechanism made it impossible for the man to have chosen otherwise, yet most people still consider him ③fully responsible for what he freely decided to do. Frankfurt used this scenario to argue that moral responsibility depends on the ④irrelevant reasoning behind a choice, not on some abstract guarantee that an alternative path ⑤remained available the entire time.

A hamburger patty need not come from a slaughtered animal if a small sample of muscle cells can be persuaded to multiply inside a steel tank. Cultured meat begins with a biopsy of animal muscle tissue, from which scientists isolate cells capable of dividing repeatedly, then feed those cells a nutrient broth that supplies the sugars, proteins, and minerals an animal's bloodstream would normally provide. Inside a bioreactor, the cells multiply across scaffolding designed to encourage them to align into fibers, gradually thickening into something that begins to resemble muscle tissue. Supporters argue that because the process never requires raising and slaughtering a whole animal, _______________. Skeptics counter that producing the specialized broth at a large enough scale remains prohibitively expensive, meaning cultured meat is unlikely to compete with conventional meat in price until the technology matures considerably further.

Desalination, the process of removing dissolved salts from seawater to produce fresh water, has increasingly been adopted by coastal regions facing chronic water scarcity. (A) 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. (B) Nevertheless, desalination remains an inherently costly and environmentally burdensome solution, a fact often overlooked amid enthusiasm for ending water shortages. 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. (C) 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.

Before a large-scale construction project such as a highway or dam receives government approval, planners in many countries are required to conduct an environmental impact assessment, a formal process designed to predict and evaluate the ecological consequences of a proposed development. (A) For instance, a proposed highway that would bisect a forest might be evaluated for its potential to fragment habitats, disrupting migration routes on which certain species depend. If the assessment identifies unacceptable risks, planners may be required to redesign the project or adopt mitigation measures such as wildlife corridors. (B) Critics contend, however, that assessments are sometimes treated as a bureaucratic formality rather than a genuine constraint, since developers who commission the studies retain strong influence over how the findings are interpreted. (C) This process begins with a baseline survey, in which specialists document existing conditions, including wildlife, water quality, and air composition, so that future changes can be measured against a reference point. Analysts then model how the project might alter these conditions, drawing on data from comparable developments.

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.

주어진 문장: Although constructing a passive house initially costs more than building a conventional home, the savings accumulated over decades of reduced energy bills often outweigh this upfront investment. As buildings account for a substantial share of global energy consumption, architects have increasingly turned to a design philosophy known as the passive house standard, which minimizes energy demand through the building's own structure rather than through mechanical systems. ① Central to this approach is airtight construction, in which continuous insulation and sealed joints prevent conditioned air from leaking outward, thereby reducing the heating and cooling loads conventional buildings require. ② Triple-glazed windows, oriented to capture sunlight in winter while shading interiors in summer, further stabilize indoor temperatures without relying heavily on furnaces or air conditioners. ③ Ventilation systems equipped with heat exchangers also recover warmth from outgoing air, transferring it to incoming air so that comfort is maintained without excessive energy use. ④ For example, some passive houses built in cold climates have reduced heating costs by more than ninety percent. ⑤ Consequently, many architects regard passive house design not as a luxury for wealthy homeowners but as a practical model capable of reshaping mainstream construction. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤

주어진 문장: This question has motivated economists to search for empirical patterns linking national income levels to measurable indicators of environmental quality. Economists have long debated whether prosperity and environmental quality are fundamentally opposed, or whether the relationship between them changes shape as an economy matures. ① The Environmental Kuznets Curve, a hypothesis borrowed from earlier theories of income inequality, proposes that pollution initially rises alongside economic growth before eventually declining once a society crosses a certain threshold of wealth. ② In its early stages, industrializing nations prioritize output over conservation, treating clean air and water as expendable costs of development to be addressed later. ③ Beyond a certain point, however, rising incomes generate both the technological capacity and the political will to demand stricter regulation, so degradation begins to reverse even as production keeps expanding. ④ Some scholars regard this trajectory as a reassuring paradox, suggesting that the very growth blamed for ecological harm may eventually finance its own repair. ⑤ Critics, by contrast, argue that the curve rests on a narrow selection of pollutants that happen to decline with wealth, while ignoring greenhouse gases and resource depletion, which show no comparable tendency to fall. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤

주어진 문장: This is not because they expect the price to recover, but because selling would force them to confront the possibility of having made a clear mistake. When people face a difficult decision, they often weigh not only the expected outcome of each option but also how painful it would feel to discover later that a different choice had been better. ( ① ) This anticipation of future regret, rather than the size of the potential loss itself, frequently becomes the dominant factor shaping the final decision. ( ② ) Investors, for example, sometimes continue holding a declining stock rather than selling it. ( ③ ) 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 helps explain why so many individuals default to inaction whenever a decision feels uncertain. ( ④ ) Ironically, this strategy of avoiding regret can itself produce outcomes that are later regretted even more deeply than the ones it was originally designed to prevent. ( ⑤ )