Stress Patterns in Pronunciation

"There is no single position where the primary stress of a word can be expected to fall in English," according to A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language.

The stress can fall anywhere from the first syllable, as in fam i ly,
to the sixth syllable, as in   in dus tri al i za tion.

However, there are a few generalizations that we can use.

1.  All abstract nouns ending in -ion are stressed on the syllable preceding this ending:
     counteraction     suspicion     adoration     exhaustion     globalization

2.  The stress falls on the last syllable before nominal -ity:
     curiosity     unanimity

3.  The stress also falls on the last syllable before the nominal and adjectival suffix -ian:
     librarian     Asian     gramarian

Of course, you can always use your dictionary to look up the position of the stress.

The problem is that you do not have time in conversation to either apply the few generalizations (above) or to look up the words in your dictionary.  Therefore, I think that the best way to improve your use of stress is to listen to lots of English, trying to include both the conversational English of movies and TV, and the more academic English from sites like Voice of America.