영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

문제 1

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks ①that used to require human hands. Economists have long debated whether this shift destroys jobs or simply ②transforms them. Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one ③had predicted. However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, ④given workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed at a pace that leaves little room for adjustment. For this reason, many economists argue that the real challenge is not the robots themselves, but the speed at which society ⑤is expected to adapt to them.

문제 2

Social media platforms rarely show users a neutral stream of information. Instead, recommendation algorithms ①are optimized to maximize engagement, and content that provokes strong emotion, particularly outrage, tends to hold attention longer than balanced reporting ever could. Over time, users ②exposed to a steady diet of emotionally charged content may come to believe that extreme opinions are far more common than they actually are, simply because those opinions ③dominate their feed. Researchers describe this as a distorted mirror: the platform reflects not society as it truly is, but a version ④shaping by whatever keeps people scrolling. Some platforms have experimented with reducing the visibility of outrage-driven content, only ⑤to see user engagement drop.

문제 3

When anthropologists first began systematically studying societies far removed from their own, many unconsciously judged unfamiliar customs against the standards of their home culture, a tendency now known as ethnocentrism. Cultural relativism emerged as a ①disruptive principle, holding that a society's practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than measured against an outside standard presumed to be universal. Anthropologist Franz Boas argued that no culture possesses an inherently ②superior set of values, and that apparent oddities, once examined closely, typically serve ③coherent functions within their own social systems. Cultural relativism transformed fields ranging from anthropology to international development, encouraging researchers to ④suspend quick judgment and seek local meaning before drawing conclusions. Critics caution, however, that taken to an extreme, the principle risks excusing practices that cause ⑤genuine harm.

문제 4

Rewilding, a conservation strategy that seeks to restore natural processes with minimal human interference, has gained attention as traditional conservation struggles to halt biodiversity loss. Rather than managing landscapes according to a ①fixed blueprint, rewilding projects often reintroduce key species, such as large predators, whose presence can trigger cascading effects. Advocates point to the reintroduction of wolves in certain parks, where predation altered grazing behavior, allowing riverside vegetation to ②decline and stabilizing soil that had long been eroding. Skeptics, however, warn that rewilding can provoke ③serious conflict with nearby communities, particularly when predators prey on livestock or restored habitats limit land for agriculture. Moreover, critics argue that restoring landscapes to an imagined pristine state is scientifically ④dubious, since ecosystems have long been shaped by human activity. Compensation programs reimbursing farmers for livestock losses, alongside ecotourism initiatives creating local income, have proven ⑤essential to sustaining public support.

문제 5

Imagine a distant planet identical to Earth in every visible respect, except that the clear liquid its inhabitants call "water" is not H2O but a different compound, XYZ, that happens to look, taste, and behave exactly the same. When an Earthling and a Twin Earthling each say the word "water," they seem to mean the ①same thing, since neither could tell the substances apart without a chemistry lab. Philosopher Hilary Putnam used this scenario to argue that the meaning of a word is not determined solely by what happens inside a speaker's head. Even though the two speakers hold ②opposing thoughts and mental images when they use the word, their statements refer to ③two different substances, because the underlying chemical composition, not personal belief, fixes what a word ultimately picks out. Meaning, Putnam concluded, depends ④partly on the world outside the mind, not merely on the ⑤private mental states of whoever happens to be speaking.

문제 6

Hospitals are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence tools that can scan medical images and flag potential tumors ①faster and, in some trials, more accurately than experienced radiologists. Patients understandably welcome any technology that catches disease earlier, yet the growing reliance on these tools raises an uncomfortable legal question that hospitals have only begun to address. When an AI system misses a diagnosis that a human doctor would likely have caught, responsibility becomes ②easy to assign. The doctor may argue that they simply trusted a tool the hospital required them to use, the hospital may argue that the software company guaranteed its accuracy, and the software company may argue that no algorithm can be expected to be ③perfect. Until legal systems ④clarify this chain of responsibility, patients harmed by an algorithmic error may find themselves with no clear party to hold ⑤accountable.

문제 7

A hamburger patty need not come from a slaughtered animal at all if a small sample of muscle cells can be ①discouraged 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 ②normally provide. Inside a bioreactor, the cells multiply across scaffolding designed to encourage them to align into fibers, ③gradually thickening into something that begins to resemble muscle tissue rather than a shapeless clump of cells. Supporters argue that because the process never requires raising and slaughtering a whole animal, it could shrink the land, water, and greenhouse gas emissions ④associated with conventional meat production. Skeptics counter that producing the specialized broth at a large enough scale remains prohibitively ⑤expensive, meaning cultured meat is unlikely to compete with conventional meat in price until the technology matures considerably further.

문제 8

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.

문제 9

When people recall precisely where they were and what they were doing at the moment they learned of some momentous public event, the resulting memory often feels extraordinarily vivid, as though it had been etched into the mind with photographic precision; researchers have termed such recollections flashbulb memories. (A) Proponents of this concept once argued that the emotional intensity and surprise accompanying such events trigger a distinct neural mechanism that preserves details with unusual fidelity, effectively exempting them from the gradual decay that afflicts ordinary memories. (B) This persistent mismatch between subjective certainty and objective consistency implies that flashbulb memories, far from being flawless recordings, are reconstructed narratives shaped by rehearsal, media exposure, and the passage of time. (C) Subsequent longitudinal studies, however, have complicated this picture considerably: when researchers compared accounts gathered within days of an event to accounts gathered years later, they discovered that details had frequently been altered, omitted, or even fabricated, even though the individuals reporting them expressed unwavering confidence in their accuracy.

문제 10

During recent years, this gap became impossible to ignore, as families in rural areas or low-income neighborhoods struggled to complete schoolwork that assumed a stable connection and a personal device. 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. ( ① ) Some policymakers initially treated internet access as a convenience, comparable to cable television, rather than as infrastructure essential to modern life. ( ② ) That assumption is increasingly being reconsidered, particularly as more essential services move online by default. ( ③ ) Closing this divide will require more than simply distributing devices. ( ④ ) It will demand sustained investment in the physical networks that carry information into every home, regardless of income or location. ( ⑤ )