영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Imagine standing at a crowded party where dozens of conversations blend into a wall of noise, yet you ①effortlessly track the words of the friend beside you. Curiously, if someone across the room utters your name, your attention snaps toward that voice almost ②instantly. This happens even though you had not consciously been listening to that conversation at all. This phenomenon, known as the cocktail party effect, reveals that selective attention does not simply block out every unattended sound. Early theorists such as Donald Broadbent proposed that unattended information is ③filtered out entirely before reaching awareness. Yet the fact that a person's own name can break through this filter ④contradicts such a rigid model. Anne Treisman later refined this account, suggesting that unattended channels are merely attenuated rather than eliminated altogether. Especially meaningful stimuli, including one's own name, can still surpass the threshold of conscious recognition. This refinement suggests that attention operates less like a gate and more like a dimmer switch, ⑤ignoring the salience of competing streams of information.

Suppose you meet a quiet, ①gentle man who speaks softly, tends a small garden, and organizes his bookshelf with meticulous care. Asked whether he is more likely a florist or a truck driver, most people ②instinctively choose florist, since his personality matches the stereotype so neatly. This judgment, however, ignores a crucial fact: truck drivers vastly ③trail florists in almost every country, which means that, statistically, he is far more likely to belong to the larger group regardless of how well he fits the flower-shop image. Relying on resemblance to a familiar category rather than on underlying numerical proportions, known among researchers as representativeness, leads people to overlook these base rates almost ④automatically. Even trained professionals, who should know better, often fall into the same trap when a vivid description feels more ⑤convincing than plain statistics.

Picture a woman who receives a plain ceramic mug as a free gift at a conference and, later that afternoon, ①refuses to sell it for anything less than triple its price in the gift shop downstairs. Before she owned the mug, she would never have paid extra for it; once it became hers, however, its value in her mind ②declined sharply, simply because she now possessed it. Researchers have ③repeatedly observed this pattern across many everyday objects, from coffee mugs and concert tickets to office chairs and old furniture inherited from relatives. Owners ④consistently demand more money to give something up than buyers are willing to offer for that very same item, revealing a curious asymmetry rooted purely in possession itself. Some economists argue that this effect explains why negotiations over inherited property so often ⑤collapse, since each side quietly attaches a different value to what it currently holds.

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.

The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple question: if every plank of a wooden ship is replaced one by one over many years, is the vessel that eventually results still the same ship it once was? (A) Suppose a careful collector gathered every discarded plank and reassembled them into a second vessel, built exactly as the original once stood. (B) Two ships would then exist side by side, each with an equal claim to being the genuine one, and no obvious way to decide between them. (C) Most people's first instinct is to answer yes, since each individual replacement seems too small to erase the ship's identity, but the puzzle grows far sharper once a second twist is introduced.

Retailers have discovered practical ways to counteract the negative effects of choice overload without simply reducing the number of products they offer. (A) One common strategy involves organizing an extensive product catalog into clearly labeled categories and subcategories, allowing customers to narrow their search gradually rather than confronting the entire array at once. (B) Another approach highlights a small number of curated recommendations, such as "staff picks" or "best sellers," giving hesitant customers a reasonable starting point without eliminating other options entirely. (C) Both strategies share a common principle: they do not reduce the objective number of choices available but instead reduce the cognitive burden of navigating them.

Classical economic theory assumes that consumers evaluate every price change in the same rational way, weighing marginal benefit against marginal cost regardless of the absolute numbers involved. (A) In a well-known laboratory experiment, participants chose between two chocolates, one of higher quality priced at a small fee and one of lower quality offered for free. When both prices were merely reduced by the same amount, most participants still preferred the higher-quality option. Yet once the cheaper chocolate's price was lowered to zero, the majority abruptly switched their preference, even though the price gap between the two options had not actually changed. (B) Researchers explain this reversal by noting that a free item carries no perceived risk of loss, which makes it feel disproportionately attractive compared with any option that still requires payment, however small. (C) Behavioral economists, however, have discovered a striking exception: the moment a price drops to exactly zero, people's judgment shifts in a way that ordinary discounting cannot explain.

Modern consumer culture often assumes that expanding the range of available options will automatically make people freer and happier, yet a growing body of research suggests the opposite may sometimes be true. (A) Having considered so many possibilities, a person naturally imagines the specific advantages that a different, unchosen option might have offered, and this imagined comparison quietly erodes contentment with what was actually selected. (B) When individuals select from an enormous set of alternatives, satisfaction with the final choice frequently declines rather than rises, even when the chosen item is objectively excellent. (C) This decline stems not from the difficulty of deciding but from what happens afterward, once a decision has already been made.

주어진 문장: In practice, however, building such extensive networks demands years of planning and substantial financial resources. As solar and wind power expand rapidly across national grids, engineers face a challenge that receives far less public attention than the construction of the generating facilities themselves. ① Unlike conventional power plants, which can adjust their output to match demand at almost any moment, solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity only when sunlight or wind is available, producing supply that fluctuates constantly. ② This intermittency means that grid operators must balance supply and demand even when renewable output suddenly drops, such as when clouds cover a solar farm or wind speeds fall. ③ One proposed solution involves large-scale battery storage systems, which absorb surplus electricity generated during periods of high output and release it later when generation declines. Another approach relies on expanding transmission networks across wider regions, so that electricity generated in a sunny area can be redirected to places experiencing a shortfall. ④ Grid operators must therefore invest in infrastructure capable of accommodating this variability, rather than assuming renewable sources can simply replace fossil fuels without adjustment. ⑤ Without such investment, integrating renewable energy could paradoxically undermine the very reliability that modern electricity grids are expected to provide. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤

The same technology, researchers realized, could be pushed even further, from generic drug screening toward medicine tailored to a single individual. A liver no longer has to sit inside a human body to be studied closely. ( ① ) By coaxing stem cells to organize themselves within a nutrient-rich gel, scientists can now grow miniature three-dimensional structures called organoids, which reproduce much of the architecture and function of a real organ despite being no larger than a grain of rice. ( ② ) Unlike flat cultures grown on a plastic dish, which lose many of the cues that guide normal development, organoids let cells interact in three dimensions much as they would inside the body. ( ③ ) This yields tissue that behaves in strikingly realistic ways. ( ④ ) This fidelity has made organoids invaluable for testing how a drug affects human tissue before any patient is exposed, sparing researchers much of the burden of relying on animal models alone. ( ⑤ ) Some laboratories have even grown organoids from a single patient's own cells, raising the possibility of trialing a treatment on a miniature copy of that patient's organ before committing to an actual course of therapy.