영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

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. This group ①need not be one to which a person actually belongs. A struggling artist may judge success not against neighbors but against celebrated painters in art history, a comparison ②that can inspire ambition or, just as easily, breed persistent dissatisfaction. Sociologists distinguish between normative reference groups, which shape a person's values and behavior, and comparative reference groups, ③which merely provide a benchmark for self-assessment. 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, because the latter could see colleagues ④advance while they themselves ⑤lagging behind.

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

Bacteria have been cutting up invading viral DNA for billions of years, long before any scientist thought to borrow the trick for use in a ①laboratory. The CRISPR-Cas9 system, as it is now known, relies on a short guide RNA that ②matches a specific DNA sequence, leading a scissor-like enzyme called Cas9 directly to that exact location in the genome. Once Cas9 arrives at the target site, it ③repairs both strands of the DNA helix, and the cell's own repair machinery rushes in to mend the cut, often introducing a small change in the process. By supplying the cell with a template during this repair step, scientists can direct that machinery to ④insert a specific new sequence rather than merely disabling the original gene. What once required years of painstaking work to alter a single gene can now be accomplished within days, a shift in ⑤speed that has reshaped nearly every corner of biological research.

Suppose a mysterious being with a near-perfect track record of predicting human choices presents a player with two boxes. Box A always contains a visible thousand dollars, while Box B contains either a million dollars or nothing at all, depending on a prediction the being made before the game even began. If the being predicted the player would take only Box B, it ①emptied the box entirely; if it predicted the player would take both boxes, it left Box B empty. The player may choose to take only Box B, or to take both boxes, and the prediction has already been made and cannot change. One line of reasoning says taking both boxes is ②strictly better, since whatever is already inside the boxes cannot be altered by the player's choice at this point. A second line of reasoning says taking only Box B is better, since the being's near-perfect ③accuracy means that choosing both boxes almost guarantees an empty Box B. This apparent ④conflict between two seemingly sound arguments has made the puzzle a lasting ⑤challenge for decision theory.

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

Social mobility refers to the movement of individuals or families between different positions within a society's system of stratification, whether upward, downward, or sideways. Sociologists distinguish intragenerational mobility, changes within a single person's lifetime, from intergenerational mobility, differences between the social position of parents and their children. A society is often judged by how much intergenerational mobility it ①permits, since high mobility suggests that outcomes depend more on effort and ability than on the ②accident of birth. Structural mobility, caused by large-scale economic shifts such as the growth of new industries, must be distinguished from individual mobility, which results from a single person's particular choices. Research across many nations has found that education functions as the primary channel of upward mobility, yet access to quality education is itself ③evenly distributed, meaning the very mechanism meant to promote ④fairness can end up ⑤reproducing the inequality it was designed to overcome.

Conventional economic wisdom holds that more options are always preferable to fewer, since a larger set of alternatives ①increases the likelihood that any individual will find one that precisely matches their preferences. When shoppers are presented with an extensive array of choices, they frequently experience heightened anxiety about making the wrong selection and, paradoxically, become ②less likely to make any purchase or decision at all. Furthermore, individuals who do eventually choose from an overwhelming array often report ③higher satisfaction with their selection than those who chose from a modest handful of options, since the sheer number of unexplored alternatives ④fosters lingering doubt about whether a better choice was overlooked. Businesses that recognize this dynamic have begun deliberately ⑤curating smaller, carefully selected assortments, betting that a narrower range of options can sometimes generate more sales and greater customer satisfaction than abundance.

When an oil tanker ruptures and crude spreads across open water, cleanup crews increasingly reach not only for skimmers and floating booms but also for something far smaller: bacteria that eat oil. (A) Scientists have learned to accelerate the process by adding nutrients that help native microbial populations multiply faster, or by introducing engineered strains, and because the method relies on living organisms rather than heavy machinery, it also tends to leave a far gentler footprint on the surrounding ecosystem than excavation or chemical treatment ever could. (B) Certain naturally occurring microbes possess enzymes capable of breaking hydrocarbon molecules apart, using the carbon as an energy source and gradually converting a toxic slick into carbon dioxide and harmless byproducts. (C) Bioremediation, as this approach is called, works far more slowly than mechanical cleanup, often taking months rather than days, but it can reach contamination trapped in soil or sediment that skimmers and booms can never reach.

Where structural functionalism emphasizes cooperation and stability, conflict theory begins from the premise that society is best understood as an ongoing struggle between groups with competing interests over scarce resources such as wealth, power, and prestige. (C) Later sociologists broadened the framework well beyond economic class, applying conflict analysis to struggles organized around race, gender, and other categories of unequal social power. (A) Rooted in the writings of Karl Marx, classical conflict theory focused on the economic struggle between those who own productive resources and those who must sell their labor to survive. (B) Unlike functionalists, who often interpret existing social arrangements as serving a necessary purpose, conflict theorists argue that apparent social order frequently masks underlying tension that dominant groups actively work to contain.

Working memory refers to the mental workspace in which information is temporarily held and manipulated while a person performs a cognitive task. Such tasks include solving an arithmetic problem, following a rapid conversation, or holding a phone number in mind before dialing it. (A) Subsequent research, however, revealed that Miller's estimate was somewhat generous, since it failed to account for the complexity of the material being remembered. Nelson Cowan later argued that when rehearsal strategies are prevented and attention is tightly controlled, genuine capacity hovers closer to four items rather than seven. (B) This discrepancy suggests that what earlier studies had measured was not raw storage capacity itself but a hybrid quantity inflated by clever strategies. Contemporary psychologists therefore distinguish between the fixed limit of working memory and the flexible techniques that allow individuals to transcend that limit. (C) In the mid-twentieth century, the psychologist George Miller proposed that this workspace could accommodate roughly seven discrete items. His claim proved so influential that it became widely known as the magic number seven.