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  • 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.

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

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