영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Why do people often overvalue objects they have partly ①built themselves, even when the finished product is objectively inferior to something they could have simply purchased? This puzzle, which researchers ②named after a furniture retailer famous for selling items that require home assembly, challenges the standard economic assumption that value is determined solely by an object's inherent qualities. In a series of experiments, participants who ③assembled a plain storage box were willing to pay nearly as much for their own imperfect creation as they were for a professionally built version, despite being fully aware of its flaws. Labor, it seems, functions as a kind of psychological investment: once effort has been ④pour into a task, individuals become reluctant to judge the outcome objectively, because doing so would require admitting that their effort was partly ⑤wasted.

As efforts to ①curb greenhouse gas emissions intensify, industries unable to eliminate carbon dioxide from their processes have turned to a technology known as carbon capture and storage. This technology involves separating carbon dioxide from the exhaust of power plants before it is released into the atmosphere, then transporting the captured gas for underground injection. Once injected into porous rock formations, the gas is trapped beneath layers of impermeable rock that prevent it from escaping into the air. Proponents argue that carbon capture and storage functions as a bridge technology, allowing heavy industries to keep operating while more sustainable alternatives are ②developed. For instance, cement and steel production, both of which release carbon dioxide as an ③unavoidable byproduct of chemical reactions, are considered prime candidates for this approach. However, critics contend that the technology remains prohibitively ④cheap and that building pipelines requires investments few companies make voluntarily. Despite such concerns, many governments continue funding pilot projects, convinced that this technology will play an ⑤indispensable role in reaching emission targets.

Scientists have long searched for a way to describe, in a single coherent framework, the outer limits within which human activity can safely continue without ①stabilizing the planet's fundamental systems. The concept of planetary boundaries, introduced by earth-system researchers, identifies nine interconnected processes, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen pollution, each possessing a threshold beyond which abrupt and ②irreversible change becomes likely. Unlike conventional environmental limits, often defined locally, these boundaries are framed at a planetary scale, reflecting the idea that the Earth functions as a single ③interdependent system rather than a collection of isolated regions. Crossing one boundary, proponents argue, does not merely damage the system involved but can also ④destabilize others, since climate, oceans, and land are bound together by feedback loops that transmit disturbance across the system. Some philosophers have likened this framework to a ship's safe operating margin, within which passengers may move freely without risking the vessel's stability. Critics, however, contend that the boundaries are drawn with more ⑤confidence than the data can support.

Emissions trading, a market-based mechanism for curbing greenhouse gases, allows governments to set an overall limit on carbon output while letting firms trade permits within that limit. Under this system, known as cap-and-trade, companies that cut emissions more ①cheaply than required can sell surplus allowances to firms facing higher reduction costs. Proponents argue that this flexibility lets society reach a given environmental target at the ②lowest overall cost, since abatement shifts toward whoever can achieve it most economically. Critics, however, contend that trading schemes frequently allocate too many permits, a flaw that has historically ③depressed carbon prices and blunted incentives to invest in cleaner technology. For example, early phases of several regional markets granted allowances so generously that permit prices ④collapsed, leaving polluters with little pressure to change their practices. Consequently, many economists now advocate combining trading with a price floor, a minimum permit price that keeps the market from collapsing during weak demand, thereby ⑤undermining the cost-effectiveness for which trading is valued.

Imagine standing at a crowded party where dozens of conversations blend into a wall of noise, yet you effortlessly track the words of the friend beside you. Curiously, if someone across the room utters your name, your attention snaps toward that voice almost instantly. 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 filtered out entirely before reaching awareness. Yet the fact that a person's own name can break through this filter contradicts such a rigid model. Anne Treisman later refined this account, suggesting that _______________. 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, adjusting the salience of competing streams of information.

Many teachers and parents worry that today's teenagers are losing the ability to read long, complex texts. (A) Other researchers disagree with this simple explanation, pointing out that teenagers today read constantly, just in different forms, such as text messages, captions, and online articles. (B) National test scores show a slow decline in reading comprehension over the past ten years, and some experts blame smartphones and short videos for shortening students' attention spans. (C) According to this view, the real problem is not that students read less overall, but that they rarely practice reading long passages without any interruption, as a recent study of monthly book readers suggested.

People often recognize, in calm reflection, that their future selves will be tempted to abandon a goal they currently value. Rather than relying solely on willpower at the critical moment, they may choose to restrict their own future options in advance, a strategy known as precommitment. (A) What unites these examples is a simple insight: because future desires cannot always be trusted, the wisest moment to act may be now, while judgment remains clear and temptation has not yet taken hold. (B) By making certain choices costly, inconvenient, or impossible to reverse, individuals can protect a long-term goal from a short-term impulse that has not yet arisen. (C) A person hoping to save money might lock funds into an account that penalizes early withdrawal, removing the very temptation that would otherwise be difficult to resist. Similarly, someone determined to finish a project might publicly announce a deadline, transforming private intentions into a commitment that carries social consequences if broken.

Many students imagine a librarian simply sitting behind a desk and stamping books. (A) According to Ms. Han, the most rewarding moment is not organizing shelves but watching a student who once avoided reading finally ask for a second book in the same series. (B) Ms. Han, who has worked at a school library for over ten years, says that image is far from accurate, since a large part of her job involves choosing which new books to buy. (C) She also spends hours training students to search databases and judge whether an online source is trustworthy, a skill she considers just as important as reading itself.

Desalination, the process of removing dissolved salts from seawater to produce fresh water, has increasingly been adopted by coastal regions facing chronic water scarcity. (A) 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. (B) 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 concentrated byproduct called brine, which, when discharged without adequate dilution, can raise local salinity to levels that harm marine life. (C) 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 consumes far less energy than the thermal distillation once dominant in the industry, it has become the preferred choice for large-scale plants.

This loss, many say, is not simply about the words themselves but about a physical sense of place within the story. Whenever people discuss the future of reading, one debate never seems to end: e-books or paper books? ( ① ) Supporters of e-books point out that a single device can hold thousands of titles, which makes traveling with a full library incredibly light. Readers can also change the font size, look up a word instantly, and carry their entire collection in one bag. ( ② ) Fans of paper books, however, argue that something important is lost on a screen. ( ③ ) Many readers say they remember a paper book's plot more clearly, perhaps because they recall where a scene appeared on the page. ( ④ ) Screens also invite distraction, since a single notification can pull a reader away from the story in seconds. ( ⑤ ) Interestingly, several recent surveys suggest that most young readers do not choose one format forever. Instead, they switch between paper and digital depending on the situation, treating the debate less as a contest and more as a matter of convenience.