Speak English: How to say words that end with -ION

Hello. My name is Emma, and today, I'm going to teach you a little bit about pronunciation.

I want you to guess what kind of pronunciation you're going to learn about today.

Behind me, I have a bunch of different words. What do these words all have in common? What is

the same about all of these words? Take a moment to look. Okay. If you noticed they

all end in-ion, you'd be correct. Today, you're going to learn about how to correctly pronounce

words with -ion in them. Okay?

So one way to improve your pronunciation is learning about stress. When I talk about stress,

I don't mean, you know, "I'm stressed. I have a test." No. I mean stress is where you say

something longer and louder. English is a stress language. We have a lot of words where

part of it you say longer and louder; the other part you say shorter and quieter.

Now, a lot of pronunciation mistakes happen when students make incorrect stress patterns,

when they don't stress words correctly. So today, I'm going to teach you how you put

stress on -ion words. Okay? So let's look at of these words.

I want you to listen. What part do I say louder and longer? "Decision, decision." If you said

"ci", you are correct. "Decision." Okay. What about the next one? "Information, information."

Good. If you said "ma', correct. "Situation, situation." Okay. Hopefully, you said "ua".

And again, sometimes it takes a while to get used to listening for this. So if you're making mistakes,

don't worry about it. It takes some time to get used to listening for stress.

"Question, question." Okay. So this part is a little bit louder and longer. "Education. Position,

position." What part is louder and longer? Here. Okay? So we're almost finished with

these words. "Nation, nation." Okay. If you said the stress is here, you're correct.

Next one. "Condition, condition." Good. This is the part that is louder and longer. "Population,

population." Okay. Hopefully, you said the "la", "population". And last but not least,

"attention, attention." Okay. This is the part I said louder and longer.

So what do you notice? Where is the stress on all of these words? What section is it?

Is it at the very beginning of the word? No. It's actually on the syllable right before

-ion. Okay. So for example, -cation, -ition, question, -ation, -mation. So what you will

notice is when we have -ion words, it doesn't matter if they're -sion, -tion -- any -ion

word, we put the stress on the syllable right before the -tion. Okay? So I want you to pause

the video and try to say these words placing stress on the parts that I put a red line

over. Okay?

Okay. So once you've finished practicing the pronunciation of these words, let's do a couple

of sentences together to make sure you really have the pronunciation correct.

So I have a very, very long sentence here. Okay? And the sentence -- the meaning is not

important. This is only for pronunciation. My sentence is, "The education of the population

is a decision that needs attention." Okay? So it's a very long sentence, but you'll notice

a lot of -ions. So again, repeat after me. "The education of the population is a decision

that needs attention." Okay? So I'll say this quickly now. "The education of the population

is a decision that needs attention." All right? Say it one more time just to see if you got it.

Wonderful. Excellent.

Okay. So now, let's do the second sentence. The second sentence is,

"The information on my condition results in more questions on my situation."

Again, the meaning of this sentence

does not matter. Let's practice the pronunciation of it. Okay. So tell me; where does the stress

go? Is it here, here, here, or here? If you said here, you are correct. So let's say this.

"The information on my condition results in more questions on my situation." All right.

Let's say this together. "The information on my condition results in more questions

on my situation." Now, I want you to try this one time quickly. All right. Let's see how

quick you can do it. I'll say it my fastest.

"The information on my condition results in more questions on my situation." Okay.

So again, there are thousands of words that end in -ion. Very, very common in English.

And if you notice people -- when you speak -- are, like, "What? I don't understand you",

it might be because of your pronunciation, and it might be because you're not putting

stress on the proper syllables.

So this is a way -- anytime you have -ion, you now know where to put the stress, what

parts to say louder and longer. So I want to invite you to our website, www.engvid.com.

There, you can practice your pronunciation in terms of a quiz. You can do a quiz to make

sure you know where to put the stress. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel for

more pronunciation videos. Until next time, thanks for watching, and take care.