영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Desalination, the process of ①removing dissolved salts from seawater to produce fresh water, has increasingly been adopted by coastal regions facing chronic water scarcity. Most modern facilities rely on reverse osmosis, a technique in which seawater is ②forced 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. 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 ③harms marine life. Pumping seawater through membranes at high pressure also ④demands substantial electricity, so plants powered by fossil fuels can worsen the emissions that intensify drought. Therefore, engineers increasingly argue that desalination should be ⑤treated not as a stand-alone remedy but as one component of a broader conservation strategy.

My cousin, who has never taken a single music lesson, recently ①used a composing app on her phone to write a short song for her friend's birthday video. Watching her work, I realized the app ②handled much of the technical difficulty that used to stop beginners from composing at all, automatically keeping her melody in key and ③suggesting chords that matched the mood she selected. What the app could not do, however, was decide which four notes actually felt right for the opening line, or when a pause said more than another note would have. She spent nearly an hour ④adjusting a single short phrase until it matched the feeling she wanted to capture, deleting and replaying it dozens of times. Watching her patient trial and error, I understood that these tools lower the technical barrier to making music, but they do not remove the very human task of ⑤decide what a piece of music is actually trying to say.

Extended producer responsibility, a policy requiring manufacturers to bear responsibility for their products even after use, has been adopted by governments seeking to ①increase landfill waste. Under such schemes, companies must ②finance the collection and recycling of goods once consumers discard them, rather than leaving municipalities to absorb the cost. Advocates maintain that shifting this burden onto producers creates a powerful incentive to design products that are more ③durable, easily disassembled, and readily recyclable from the outset. Critics counter that the policy, whatever its theoretical merits, often fails to reduce waste meaningfully unless paired with ④rigorous enforcement and transparent reporting requirements. For instance, some manufacturers merely pass the added cost of compliance on to consumers, without making substantive changes to how products are designed. In contrast, jurisdictions that combine producer responsibility with strict eco-design standards and independent audits tend to witness ⑤genuine improvements in recyclability.

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. Manufacturers derive these materials from renewable resources such as corn starch, blending them with additives that accelerate microbial breakdown once discarded. However, _______________. 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. 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.

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. (A) Compensation programs reimbursing farmers for livestock losses, alongside ecotourism initiatives creating local income, have proven essential to sustaining public support. Ultimately, rewilding succeeds not by removing human influence but by renegotiating the relationship between people and the wild species they must coexist with. (B) Rather than managing landscapes according to a fixed 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 recover and stabilizing soil that had long been eroding. (C) Skeptics, however, warn that rewilding can provoke serious 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 dubious, since ecosystems have long been shaped by human activity.

Smart speakers have quietly become a fixture in many households, responding to spoken requests for weather updates, music, or kitchen timers. (A) Still, the technology remains far from perfect, since background noise, overlapping voices, or an unusual sentence structure can cause the assistant to misunderstand a simple request. (B) Because these assistants improve by learning from millions of interactions, they gradually become better at recognizing regional accents and casual phrasing that once confused them. (C) Behind this simple exchange lies a complex process: the device converts sound waves into text, interprets the meaning, and then generates a spoken reply, all within a second or two.

On Saturday afternoons, the small square near my house fills with the sound of a street guitarist who sets up his amplifier beside the fountain. (A) Unlike a concert hall performance, a street show has no fixed stage and no guaranteed audience, so the musician must win people's attention within the first few seconds or lose them to their phones. This constant negotiation between performer and passerby, I realized, is itself a kind of art. (B) He does not merely play requests; he studies the mood of the crowd and adjusts his set list on the spot, slowing down for a tired evening walker or speeding up when children start dancing nearby. (C) At first, I assumed busking was simply a way for musicians to earn a little pocket money, but watching him more closely changed my mind.

Before a large-scale construction project such as a highway or dam receives government approval, planners in many countries are required to conduct an environmental impact assessment, a formal process designed to predict and evaluate the ecological consequences of a proposed development. (A) For instance, a proposed highway that would bisect a forest might be evaluated for its potential to fragment habitats, disrupting migration routes on which certain species depend. If the assessment identifies unacceptable risks, planners may be required to redesign the project or adopt mitigation measures such as wildlife corridors. (B) Critics contend, however, that assessments are sometimes treated as a bureaucratic formality rather than a genuine constraint, since developers who commission the studies retain strong influence over how the findings are interpreted. (C) This process begins with a baseline survey, in which specialists document existing conditions, including wildlife, water quality, and air composition, so that future changes can be measured against a reference point. Analysts then model how the project might alter these conditions, drawing on data from comparable developments.

This convenience gap between renting the scooter itself and preparing to ride it safely explains a great deal. Electric scooters have become a common sight on city sidewalks, offering a quick way to cover short distances, yet most riders climb on without ever putting on a helmet. ( ① ) Part of the problem is that renting a scooter takes only a few taps on a phone screen, while finding and carrying a helmet requires planning that many riders simply skip. ( ② ) Emergency room doctors note that scooter-related head injuries have risen sharply in recent years, closely tracking the rise in scooter popularity itself. ( ③ ) Unlike a bicycle, which typically requires balance skills built up over years of practice, an electric scooter can reach a surprising speed within seconds, often faster than new riders expect from something that looks simple to operate. ( ④ ) A fall at that speed, onto pavement rather than grass, can cause a head injury just as severe as one from a bicycle or a small motorcycle. ( ⑤ ) Cities that have begun requiring helmets for scooter rentals report a measurable drop in serious injuries.

주어진 문장: In other words, memory is not a fixed archive but an ever-changing record that is rewritten each time it is accessed. For much of the twentieth century, memory researchers assumed that once a memory had been consolidated—transformed from a fragile, short-term trace into a stable, long-term representation—it remained essentially fixed, immune to further modification unless the underlying neural circuitry was physically damaged. ( ① ) This assumption, however, was overturned by a body of research demonstrating that the act of retrieval itself can destabilize a previously consolidated memory, rendering it temporarily susceptible to alteration before it is, in a sense, filed away again. ( ② ) During this narrow window, which typically lasts only a few hours, the memory can be strengthened, weakened, or even subtly distorted by new information encountered in the interim, after which it must undergo a second round of stabilization, a process now widely referred to as reconsolidation. ( ③ ) Consequently, what we experience as a stable recollection may actually be a continuously revised construction, ( ④ ) reshaped every time it is summoned into conscious awareness and returned to storage. ( ⑤ )