영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Millions of people now wear devices that continuously track their heart rate, sleep patterns, and daily activity, generating an ①intimate stream of health data that would have been unthinkable to collect just two decades ago. Users generally assume this information belongs to them, since it is drawn directly from their own bodies. In practice, however, the terms of service that few people read often grant the manufacturer ②narrow rights to store, analyze, and even sell anonymized versions of that data to insurers or advertisers. This arrangement becomes especially troubling when health data influences decisions far beyond fitness, such as insurance premiums or employment screening. Advocates for reform argue that biological data deserves a category of protection ③stronger than ordinary consumer information, precisely because it can never truly be ④replaced or reset once it has been ⑤exposed.

Desalination, the process of removing dissolved salts from seawater to produce fresh water, has increasingly been adopted by coastal regions facing chronic water ①scarcity. 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 ②consumes far less energy than the thermal distillation once dominant in the industry, it has become the preferred choice for large-scale plants. 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 ③concentrated 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 ④alleviate 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 ⑤broader conservation strategy.

Imagine two travelers preparing for the same trip: one refuses to fly after watching news coverage of a recent plane crash, while the other books a flight without hesitation. Statistically, air travel remains far safer than driving the same distance by car, yet vivid, emotionally charged images tend to dominate human judgment more powerfully than dry statistics ever could. This tendency, in which people estimate how likely an event is based on _______________, quietly shapes countless everyday decisions. News broadcasts that repeatedly feature rare disasters can leave viewers convinced that such events are common, even though official records clearly show the opposite. Advertisers and politicians alike exploit this pattern, knowing that a single striking anecdote often persuades audiences more effectively than pages of careful statistics ever manage to.

Prospect theory proposes that the subjective value of money is not a straight line but a curved function. In the domain of gains, the function bends downward as amounts increase. A parallel pattern appears among losses, where the curve bends in the opposite direction, yet sensitivity still fades as the amount grows larger. This tendency, known as diminishing sensitivity, explains why _______________. Understanding this curvature allows economists to predict decisions that a simple, linear model of value could never anticipate.

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. (C) 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. (A) Sociologists distinguish intragenerational mobility, changes within a single person's lifetime, from intergenerational mobility, differences between the social position of parents and their children. (B) Research across many nations has found that education functions as the primary channel of upward mobility, yet access to quality education is itself unevenly distributed.

When people evaluate their personal contribution to water scarcity, they often consider only the water that flows directly from household taps, overlooking a far larger quantity consumed indirectly through the goods they purchase. (A) The water footprint, a concept that extends this narrow view, measures the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services an individual or a nation consumes. Central to this concept is the notion of virtual water, the water embedded invisibly within a product, from irrigating cotton fields to livestock raised for meat. (B) Critics caution, however, that focusing exclusively on aggregate volume can mislead policymakers, since a liter of water drawn from a region suffering drought carries far greater consequences than one drawn from a water-abundant area. (C) For instance, producing a kilogram of beef can require several thousand liters of water, whereas a kilogram of vegetables typically demands a fraction of that amount. Nations that import water-intensive goods rather than producing them domestically are importing virtual water from regions that may face severe shortages.

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.

주어진 문장: This strategic use of the illusion, however, remains deeply controversial among economists who worry about its long-term costs to public trust. When workers receive a five percent raise in a year when prices have climbed five percent as well, their real purchasing power has not changed at all, yet many still report feeling noticeably better off. ( ① ) This tendency to judge economic well-being by nominal figures printed on a paycheck, rather than by what that money can actually purchase, is known among economists as money illusion. ( ② ) Employers exploit this pattern by favoring modest nominal raises over deeper structural adjustments, since a visible increase on a payslip satisfies employees more effectively than an explanation about inflation could. ( ③ ) The illusion persists even among people who claim to understand inflation well, which suggests that the bias operates at an intuitive level that formal knowledge does not easily override. ( ④ ) Some economists argue that policymakers should exploit this illusion strategically, since workers resist nominal wage cuts far more fiercely than they resist the equivalent erosion of real wages. ( ⑤ ) Whatever position one takes, ignoring money illusion in wage policy risks badly misjudging how people will respond.

In other words, no single app may intend to expose such sensitive information, but the combination of many small pieces can. Every time a smartphone connects to a cell tower or a Wi-Fi network, it quietly records a data point that can later be pieced together into a detailed map of where its owner has been. ( ① ) Most users agree to this tracking without reading the fine print, assuming that a single company's database poses little threat. ( ② ) The real danger, however, emerges when location data from multiple sources is combined. ( ③ ) A pattern that reveals a person's home, workplace, and daily route can expose far more than any single app ever intended to share, including medical visits or private relationships. ( ④ ) Companies often argue that anonymized data cannot be traced back to individuals, yet researchers have repeatedly shown otherwise. ( 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