“Saifi Institute is much more than a school and a place to learn Arabic.  We have created a nurturing environment that embraces student-teacher communication, creativity, and fun. Our approach reflects our commitment to providing a learning environment that is accessible to all, imbued with the spirit of adventure.”

Our highly trained teachers come from different backgrounds including journalism, linguistics, Arabic language and literature. We train our teachers in the Saifi methodology which focuses on meeting the specific needs of our students who come from all over the world to study with us. Our teachers are warm, friendly and positive both inside and outside the classroom.

Teamwork is of the utmost importance at Saifi.  We work hard to provide a supportive environment for staff and students. We believe teaching is a process of mutual learning.

In 2008 the Saifi Institute was born through a passion of teaching Arabic to foreigners by its Founder Rana Al-Dirani. Since 2001 when she started teaching Arabic, she realized there were problems with the programs. The books available for the courses at that time did not satisfy her teaching goals. She felt that the material she taught scared students as opposed to making them love the language. The methods she was using felt dry, lifeless, and difficult to understand.  They didn’t reflect how Arabic was used in daily life.  She wanted to teach the Arabic she knew, an Arabic full of life and expression.

By day she continued to teach, but by night she started creating new lessons, strategies and techniques that she believed would help her students.  Her goal was not just to teach the language of daily life (the Levantine dialect), but also to empower her students to feel confident about their language skills.  In addition they would have a strong knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and the local culture. This is when she came up with the idea of a new methodology called “Urban Arabic”, a systematic program that teaches students how to speak Arabic the way most arabs do on a daily basis and how to read and write, starting from the ground up.

Rana’s dream was to build a team that taught with the same passion that she did; she needed excited and creative teachers who were capable of helping every student reach their full potential.  She wanted students to leave the classroom feeling confident and happy.

Saifi Institute is the home of those dreams and goals. It has become one of the largest Arabic schools in Lebanon and the Middle East. Every year, Saifi teaches an average of 160 courses and welcome over 2000 students from all over the world.  The dream does not stop here: our goal is to be the largest Arabic school in the world.