the
Forty Four
Academy
A British English pronunciation programme for the teachers who teach it.
Built from the Book of Conversation.
The Forty Four Academy is the live, online expression of Diction Masters’ flagship teacher curriculum — the Book of Conversation. The book teaches the same forty-four sounds in print, with classroom practice sections and the Nigerian Trap diagnostics that this programme is built around.
The Academy brings that material into a guided cohort: structured release, daily practice, voice feedback, and a certificate that documents what the teacher has mastered.
Diction Masters has worked with hundreds of Nigerian schools on diction and English communication. The Forty Four Academy is the most concentrated form of that work — twelve weeks, one private channel, every sound.
"If we want the children to speak well, we have to teach the people who teach them."
For too long, pronunciation has been treated as something children either pick up or don’t. But sound is taught — by adults, in classrooms, day by day. The Forty Four Academy was built to give Nigerian teachers what most of them were never given themselves: the full inventory of British English sounds, taught properly, drilled until they hold.
About the Programme
Pronunciation is taught by example. So who taught the teachers?
The 44 Academy is Diction Masters’ flagship teacher training programme — a term-long, cohort-based curriculum designed to transform Nigerian educators into confident, credentialed practitioners of British Received Pronunciation (RP). It is the most comprehensive British-English phonology programme available to Nigerian teachers, combining the 31 foundational rhythm-and-stress tricks of Sound British in 7 Days with the complete 44-phoneme inventory of British RP.
The programme is built for a specific reality: Nigerian teachers are asked to teach English pronunciation to children, but were rarely taught pronunciation themselves. The result is a generational cascade — teachers who learned English from teachers who learned English from teachers, all carrying forward the same unexamined patterns. The 44 Academy interrupts this cascade. It gives every graduating teacher a systematic, phoneme-by-phoneme mastery of the sound system of British English, along with the teaching tools to transmit that mastery to their students.
Delivered through a private Telegram Academy over an academic term (approximately 12 to 16 weeks), the programme covers three months of structured lessons, weekly practice submissions, personal feedback from Jonathan Onah, and a final Master Practitioner Certification assessment. Graduates receive the Diction Masters Master Practitioner credential — a formal certification that they have completed the full 31 tricks plus 44 phonemes and can produce, model, and teach every sound of British RP.
The 44 Academy is offered to individual educators seeking professional development, to schools enrolling their entire English department cohort, and to state education agencies commissioning Diction Masters for teacher-quality initiatives.
The teacher is the model.
In a Nigerian classroom, the teacher’s voice is the first English a child hears with authority. Its shape, its pace, its forty-four distinct sounds — that voice becomes the child’s reference for life.
Most teachers were never taught the sounds.
Phonemes are not folk knowledge. The British English sound system was rarely part of teacher training in Nigeria. Most teachers were taught the alphabet of letters; no one taught them the alphabet of sounds.
The gaps are inherited.
So generation after generation, the same twelve or thirteen mispronunciations get passed down. Tree for three. Fest for first. Dem for them. The fix isn’t shaming the children. It’s training the teachers.
Forty-four sounds. Twelve weeks.
One private cohort.
Every phoneme in British English Received Pronunciation — taught in sequence, drilled to fluency, recorded for feedback. Hover any sound to see a word example.
44
Phonemes
12
Weeks
RP
Standard
iː
see
ɪ
sit
e
ten
æ
cat
ʌ
cup
ɑː
car
ɒ
hot
ɔː
law
ʊ
put
uː
too
ɜː
bird
ə
about
eɪ
say
aɪ
my
ɔɪ
boy
əʊ
go
aʊ
now
ɪə
near
eə
hair
ʊə
pure
p
pen
b
bad
t
tea
d
day
k
cat
g
go
tʃ
chair
dʒ
job
f
fly
v
van
θ
three
ð
this
s
see
z
zoo
ʃ
she
ʒ
measure
h
hot
m
man
n
no
ŋ
sing
l
love
r
red
w
we
j
yes
A live cohort, run inside one private Telegram channel.
No app to download, no LMS to wrestle with. The platform your teachers already use — turned into a serious training environment.
i. Enrol
Pay & Join
Settle the cohort fee through Paystack — card, transfer, or USSD. We add each enrolled teacher to the private Telegram channel within hours.
ii. Learn
One Sound At A Time
A new phoneme every few days. Each lesson includes a teaching video, audio examples in British RP, the IPA symbol, and the spelling patterns that produce it.
iii. Practice
Record & Refine
Submit voice notes for each sound. Receive private feedback on what’s landed and what needs another pass. The cohort drills together, weekly.
iv. Certify
Earn The Mark
Complete all forty-four sounds and pass the final diagnostic to receive your Diction Masters certificate of proficiency. Verifiable. Dated. Signed.
See how educators train inside.
The 44 Academy is a term-long, cohort-based programme delivered through a private Telegram group organised sound by sound. Every one of the 44 phonemes has its own topic thread with a video, spelling patterns, drill words, passage, minimal pairs, dialogue, and tongue twister. Educators post their recordings. Jonathan reviews personally. This is what that world looks like.
Watch a preview of the lessons.
Six sample lessons straight from the actual course. Click any video to play.
Lesson Title
OY boy, noise, coin
Lesson Title
OH no, home, go
Lesson Title
Long ER bird, learn, work
Lesson Title
Long AW lord, court, walk
Lesson Title
AY day, name, make
Lesson Title
Short i – sit, fill, ship
We name the traps. Then we drill them out.
A preview of three sounds Nigerian teachers commonly mispronounce — and what the programme does about them.
θ
The voiceless “th”
TRAP: tree for three. tank for thank. The /θ/ sound collapses into /t/.
DRILL: Tongue between the teeth, soft breath. Minimal pairs across an entire week until the muscle memory holds.
ɜː
The long, open central vowel
TRAP: fest for first. bed for bird. The schwa-long collapses to short /e/.
DRILL: Vowel-length contrasts, mouth-shape work, and ear-tuning to hear the difference before producing it.
ə
The schwa, English’s quietest sound
TRAP: a-bout for ə-bout. Unstressed vowels get pronounced fully, breaking English rhythm.
DRILL: Weak-form practice, sentence-rhythm exercises, and recordings against native RP samples.
Two ways to enrol.
Same content. Same certificate.
For Schools
Train your full English team.
Enrol every English, Phonics, and Language Arts teacher in your school. Cohort proceeds at one pace; reporting is sent to the Head Teacher; certificates are issued in your school’s name.
₦6,000
/per person
- Per-teacher pricing with school-tier discounts
- Termly enrolment cycles aligned with the academic calendar
- Progress reports to the Head Teacher every fortnight
- Certificates issued to your school for display
- Optional: in-person diagnostic visit before term begins
Enrol your teachers. Before the cohort fills.
Seats are limited. Termly intake. The right time to start is before the new academic session — so the gains land in the classroom from day one.
