영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

문제 1

As more schools shift toward digital textbooks and online assignments, a student without reliable internet access at home faces a disadvantage that has little to do with talent or effort. During recent years, this gap became ①impossible to ignore, as families in rural areas or low-income neighborhoods struggled to complete schoolwork that assumed a stable connection and a personal device. Some policymakers initially treated internet access as a ②convenience, comparable to cable television, rather than as infrastructure essential to modern life. That assumption is increasingly being reconsidered, particularly as more essential services move online by default. Closing this divide will require ③far less than simply distributing devices; it will demand ④sustained investment in the physical networks that carry information into every home, ⑤regardless of income or location.

문제 2

Modern consumer culture often assumes that expanding the range of available options will automatically make people ①freer and happier, yet a growing body of research suggests the opposite may sometimes be true. When individuals select from an enormous set of alternatives, satisfaction with the final choice frequently ②increases rather than declines, even when the chosen item is objectively excellent. This decline stems not from the difficulty of deciding but from what happens afterward, once a decision has already been made. Having considered so many possibilities, a person naturally imagines the specific advantages that a different, unchosen option might have offered, and this imagined comparison ③quietly erodes contentment with what was actually selected. By contrast, someone who chose from only two or three alternatives rarely constructs such an ④elaborate fantasy of missed advantages. The paradox, therefore, is that abundance can free people from external constraint while simultaneously ⑤trapping them in a private cycle of comparison and regret.

문제 3

Classical economic theory long assumed that decision makers gather all relevant information, calculate every possible outcome, and select the single option that maximizes their benefit. Herbert Simon, however, questioned this assumption, arguing that human beings operate under real constraints of time, knowledge, and mental capacity that make such ①exhaustive calculation practically impossible. Instead of searching ②endlessly for the theoretically perfect choice, people typically stop once they find an option that seems good enough to meet their immediate needs, a strategy Simon termed satisficing. A shopper comparing refrigerators, for example, rarely examines every model available; she instead sets a few practical criteria, such as price and size, and selects the first appliance that satisfies them ③adequately. This approach is not a failure of reasoning but rather a sensible adaptation to a world where information is ④costly and time is genuinely limited. Consequently, models assuming unlimited rationality often fail to predict actual behavior, while frameworks acknowledging these cognitive boundaries offer a far more ⑤unrealistic account of how ordinary decisions are actually made.

문제 4

Social unrest does not always emerge from the poorest conditions; it frequently erupts when circumstances are improving but not quickly enough to satisfy rising expectations. (A) Political scientist Ted Gurr illustrated the pattern with what is often called the J-curve: revolutions tend to follow a period of sustained improvement that is then followed by a sudden reversal. (B) This paradox lies at the heart of relative deprivation theory, which holds that discontent arises less from objective hardship than from a perceived gap between what people expect and what they actually receive. (C) Because the theory centers on perception rather than raw statistics, it helps explain why relatively prosperous societies can experience intense protest while long-impoverished societies sometimes remain comparatively quiet.

문제 5

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.

문제 6

주어진 문장: This insight helps explain why memory athletes can recall astonishing amounts of information despite possessing the same underlying cognitive architecture as everyone else. Working memory refers to the mental workspace in which information is temporarily held and manipulated while a person performs a cognitive task. ( ① ) Such tasks include solving an arithmetic problem, following a rapid conversation, or holding a phone number in mind before dialing it. ( ② ) 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. ( ③ ) Subsequent research, however, revealed that Miller's estimate was somewhat generous, since it failed to account for the complexity of the material being remembered. ( ④ ) 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. This discrepancy suggests that what earlier studies had measured was not raw storage capacity itself but a hybrid quantity inflated by clever strategies. ( ⑤ ) Contemporary psychologists therefore distinguish between the fixed limit of working memory and the flexible techniques that allow individuals to transcend that limit.

문제 7

If such a divide hardens, competitive advantages in school, sports, and the workplace could come to depend less on effort than on access to capital. Beyond restoring lost function, engineers are now exploring implants and prosthetics designed to give healthy people abilities beyond ordinary human limits. ( ① ) Supporters frame this as simply the next step in a long history of human enhancement, no different in principle from eyeglasses or vaccines. ( ② ) Critics counter that earlier enhancements were broadly available to anyone regardless of wealth. ( ③ ) Cutting-edge neural and physical implants, by contrast, are likely to remain expensive for decades, potentially splitting society into those who can afford enhancement and those who cannot. ( ④ ) What began as a medical tool for restoring what was lost, in other words, may end up redefining the baseline of what counts as an ordinary human being. ( ⑤ )

문제 8

주어진 문장: The two images were otherwise identical in every respect, differing only in the single altered detail. Change blindness refers to a striking limitation of human perception in which observers fail to notice substantial alterations to a visual scene, provided the change occurs during a brief disruption such as an eye movement or a momentary obstruction. ( ① ) In a now-famous demonstration, researchers showed participants two versions of a photograph in alternation, separated by a short blank screen, and asked them to identify what had changed. ( ② ) Even when an entire building disappeared or a person's clothing shifted color, many viewers stared at the picture without detecting anything unusual. ( ③ ) This phenomenon occurs because visual attention, rather than passively recording every detail like a camera, actively selects only a narrow subset of information for processing at any given moment. ( ④ ) Whatever falls outside that narrow spotlight is represented only sparsely, if at all, leaving it vulnerable to being overwritten without notice. ( ⑤ ) Consequently, change blindness demonstrates that our impression of a rich, complete visual world is, to a surprising extent, an illusion constructed by the mind, not a faithful record of external reality.

문제 9

Suppose a traveler journeyed backward in time and, through some combination of accident and intention, prevented their own grandfather from ever meeting their grandmother. Time travel to the past has long fascinated physicists and philosophers alike, but it also generates a famously troubling contradiction. ( ① ) If the grandfather never had children, the traveler themselves would never have been born, which means the traveler could never have existed to make the trip in the first place. ( ② ) Yet if the traveler never made the trip, the grandfather would have survived to meet the grandmother after all, allowing the traveler to be born and eventually travel back in time. ( ③ ) The story therefore loops endlessly, undermining itself at every turn rather than settling into any stable outcome. ( ④ ) Some physicists resolve the paradox by arguing that any consistent timeline must forbid such self-defeating actions from ever succeeding. ( ⑤ ) Others propose that a traveler who alters the past simply branches off into a separate, parallel timeline instead.

문제 10

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 )