영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Economists have long debated whether prosperity and environmental quality are fundamentally opposed, or whether the relationship between them ①changes shape as an economy matures. The Environmental Kuznets Curve, a hypothesis ②borrowed 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. In its early stages, industrializing nations prioritize output over conservation, ③treats clean air and water as expendable costs of development to be addressed later. Beyond a certain point, however, rising incomes generate both the technological capacity and the political will ④to demand stricter regulation, so degradation begins to reverse even as production keeps expanding. Some scholars regard this trajectory as a reassuring paradox, suggesting that the very growth ⑤blamed for ecological harm may eventually finance its own repair. 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.

Symbolic interactionism approaches society not as a fixed structure imposed from above but as something continuously ①constructed through everyday face-to-face interaction, in which individuals interpret and respond to the symbolic meanings that objects, actions, and other people hold for them. Sociologist George Herbert Mead argued that the self itself ②emerges through this interactive process, as individuals learn to see themselves from the perspective of others, gradually ③internalizing what he called the generalized other. Erving Goffman extended this framework with his dramaturgical approach, comparing social life to a theatrical performance in which individuals manage impressions, present different faces in different settings, and carefully control what audiences ④see backstage versus onstage. Unlike structural theories that emphasize large institutions, symbolic interactionism focuses on the small, repeated exchanges through which shared meaning ⑤negotiating.

Individuals rarely evaluate their own lives in ①isolation; instead, they measure their achievements, possessions, and status against a reference group, a set of people they use as a standard for comparison. A struggling artist may judge success not against neighbors but against celebrated painters in art history, a comparison that can inspire ambition or, just as easily, ②breed persistent dissatisfaction. Sociologists distinguish between normative reference groups, which shape a person's values and behavior, and comparative reference groups, which merely provide a ③benchmark 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 advancing while they themselves ④surpassed them. This counterintuitive finding demonstrates that satisfaction depends less on objective circumstances than on the group against which those circumstances are ⑤measured.

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? Most people's first instinct is to answer yes, since each individual replacement seems too small to erase the ship's identity. The puzzle grows far sharper, however, once a second twist is introduced. Suppose a careful collector gathered every discarded plank and reassembled them into a second vessel, built exactly as the original once stood. 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. Philosophers return to this old story again and again, not because they care about timber, but because it forces us to ask whether identity depends on continuous material, continuous form, or _______________.

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

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks that used to require human hands. (A) However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, giving workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed much faster. (B) Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one had predicted. (C) A factory worker displaced this year, therefore, cannot simply wait for a new industry to emerge decades from now.

Facial recognition software has moved rapidly from airport security lines into shopping malls, schools, and even private apartment buildings. (A) Independent studies, however, have repeatedly found that many commercial systems perform less accurately on women and people with darker skin tones. (B) Proponents note that the technology can unlock doors, catch shoplifters, and speed up identity checks far faster than any human guard could manage. (C) Several cities have already reported cases in which an innocent person was detained based on a flawed match.

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.

주어진 문장: Two competing technologies have historically vied for dominance in this field: thermal distillation, which relies on evaporation, and membrane-based filtration, which separates salt without boiling the water. Desalination, the process of removing dissolved salts from seawater to produce fresh water, has increasingly been adopted by coastal regions facing chronic water scarcity. ① 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. ② Because this method consumes far less energy than the thermal distillation once dominant in the industry, it has become the preferred choice for large-scale plants. ③ Nevertheless, desalination remains an inherently costly and environmentally burdensome solution, a fact often overlooked amid enthusiasm for ending water shortages. ④ For instance, the process generates a concentrated byproduct called brine, which, when discharged without adequate dilution, can raise local salinity to levels that harm marine life. ⑤ Pumping seawater through membranes at high pressure also demands substantial electricity, so plants powered by fossil fuels can worsen 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 broader conservation strategy. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤

Fairness, in other words, is not a feature that can simply be patched in once a problem is discovered. Many large companies now rely on artificial intelligence to screen job applications before a human ever sees them. ( ① ) These systems promise efficiency, scanning thousands of resumes in seconds and ranking candidates according to patterns drawn from previous hiring decisions. ( ② ) However, this reliance on historical data creates a troubling risk. ( ③ ) If a company's past hiring favored a particular group, the algorithm may learn to treat that pattern as a marker of success and quietly reproduce it, even when no one intended discrimination. ( ④ ) Unlike a human interviewer, the system offers no explanation for its choices, which makes the bias difficult to detect until an outside audit reveals it. ( ⑤ ) Some researchers argue that fairness cannot be added afterward; it must be built into the system's design from the very beginning.