9급 국가직 영어 2008년 기출문제

사람의 키는 자신의 가운데 손가락 길이의 약 20배 정도 된다고 한다.

A: Have you been served?

B:                     

There are two excellent television programs scheduled tonight, but I can see only one of them because they are             .

Icelanders are individualists like Americans. The difference seems to be in a sense of community. Iceland, known as the land of “fire and ice,” is about living with opposing forces. It is one of the most active volcanic countries on earth, but has 4,536 square miles of _______ ― heat and cold, co-existing. No surprise then that its society can reconcile another set of opposing forces: individualism and the needs of the community.

In retrospect, I was taken in by the real estate agent who had a fancy manner of talking.

The substantial rise in the number of working mothers, whose costs for childcare were not factored into the administration’s policymaking, was one of the main reasons that led to the unexpected result at the polls.

Younger students ① who participated in the survey ② sponsored by a weekly magazine turned out ③ to be less concerned about the serious problems of homeless people ④ as the older students were.

When Jesse and Rachel got married, they knew they wanted to live in a traditional nuclear family ― mother, father, and biological children. Each of them had come from other family arrangements, and they had decided that a more traditional arrangement was what they wanted. Rachel had been born out of wedlock. Because her parents had never married, she had never met her biological father. Jesse’s mother had been widowed. His father’s early death made Jesse want to have a large family.

Broom jumping is most famous in the United States as an African-American wedding custom. The broom holds spiritual significance for many African people, representing the beginning of homemaking for a couple. The ritual itself in America was created during slavery. Because slaves could not legally marry, they created their own ways to honor their unions. Broom jumping is a ritual in which the bride and the groom, either at the ceremony or at the reception, signify their entrance into a new life and their creation of a new family by symbolically sweeping away of their former single lives, and jumping over the broom to enter upon a new adventure as wife and husband.

Upstate New York florist Patricia Woysher has been in the business for forty years. She’s sold flowers to tens of thousands of folks in the area and even received one of the best assignments a florist could hope for, decorating the White House for the Christmas season. “I had to take a deep breath. I mean, you see pictures of the place all your life, then one day you’re in the Oval Office.” Despite the excitement, Patricia’s focus remained on her day-to-day concerns. “Doing the White House was exciting and rewarding, but my job is to run my business. I want to have something here that will last forever, that I can pass on to my children.”

It is a great nuisance that knowledge cannot be acquired without trouble. It can only be acquired by hard work. It would be fine if we could swallow the powder of profitable information made palatable by the jam of fiction. But the truth is that, so made palatable, we cannot be sure that the powder will be profitable. I suggest to you that the knowledge the novelist imparts is ( ㉠ ) and thus ( ㉡ ) and it is better not to know a thing at all than to know it in a distorted fashion. If readers wish to inform themselves of the pressing problems of the day, they will do better to read, not novels but the books that specifically deal with them. I suggest to you that it is enough for a novelist to be a good novelist. It is unnecessary for him to be a prophet, a politician or a leader of thought. Fiction is an art and the purpose of art is to please.

Two men were dining together in a restaurant. The first man ordered the food. The second man, who was unaccustomed to eating out, said nothing. When the food arrived, the second man _______ everything his friend did. When the first man took rice, so did the second. The first man ate a shrimp, and so did the second man. Finally, the first man took a toothpick, and his friend did the same. Later the first man asked his friend how he had enjoyed the meal. The second man answered, “Everything was perfect, except for the last bit. It tasted like bamboo.”

A Western-style conversation between two people is like a game of tennis. If I introduce a topic, a conversational ball, I expect you to hit it back. If you agree with me, I don’t expect you simply to agree and do nothing more. I expect you to add something ― a reason for agreeing, another example, or an elaboration to carry the idea further. But I don’t expect you always to agree. I am just as happy if you question me, or challenge me, or completely disagree with me. Whether you agree or disagree, _______.

A cause always has an effect, and an effect has a cause. Often, however, in searching for the cause or effect of an act, we jump to conclusions. If John Wilkins, who is big and strong, doesn’t go out for the football team, some pupils say, “Wilkins has no courage.” Perhaps the real reason is that his parents object, he is behind in his school work and can’t afford the time, or he believes that football is not worth playing.

The saying for which I had to find the meaning was: “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

(A) My first guess was that it was about a situation in which those who want to fight should first think about defending themselves from attack. Obviously, a person whose house is made of glass, which is easily broken, should be careful. If you throw a stone, the person at whom you threw the stone could throw it back and smash your house.

(B) I think this is good advice for anyone who is critical of other people.

(C) However, this saying, whose meaning I looked up in a dictionary of English idioms is not really about fighting. It means that you should not criticize others for faults similar to those you have.

Such variation, however, was common then with the spelling of many words, not just names.

William Shakespeare is rightly regarded as one of the world’s great writers; yet it would seem that he couldn’t spell his own name! ( ㉠ ) Samples of his signature that have survived show his name spelled in several different ways. ( ㉡ ) Not until the eighteenth century when dictionaries came into use was a single spelling for each word accepted as correct. ( ㉢ ) A few words, however, escaped being standardized in this way; ‘instill’ (which can also be spelled ‘instil’) is one of them. ( ㉣ ) When a dictionary gives two different spellings of a word, the one given first is preferred.

The term home schooling or home tuition, as it is called in England, means educating children at home or in places other than a mainstream setting such as a public or private school. There are many reasons why parents choose home schooling for their children. Some parents are dissatisfied with the quality of education in the public schools. Others do not want their children to have to worry about “peer pressure,” or social pressure from friends. They say it may interfere with the child’s studies. These parents fear this type of pressure will lead to negative behavior such as smoking, drinking alcohol, and taking drugs.