So hi and welcome to our talk here to stay gaining persistence by abusing advanced authentication mechanisms. I'm Marina, I'm here today with EGAL, we're both security researchers at Microsoft at the ATA Group. So today I want to discuss with you some legitimate mechanisms in Active Directory which might get abused by attackers in order to get persistence in the environment. So first of all they're relatively easy to exploit that do not require the search for any zero-day exploits. Also they can be very easily automated and last and worst of all those are usually not monitored which may allow attackers to stay under the radar and gain persistence without being detected for a long time. After presenting some of those we'll discuss some of the detection methods what you can do in order to prevent this from happening in your own environment. Also if you have any feedback we'd love to hear from you after this talk. So what's our agenda for today? We'll begin with an introduction to some key terms which are important to understand the attacks in ours we're going to show a bit later on. We'll begin with an intro to Keros and Keros delegation. Then we'll dive in into our main subject of a talk how attackers can gain persistence in an Active Directory environment. Specifically we will focus on the stage in which attackers have already gained high privileges and they're interested in maintaining them for as long as possible without being detected. We'll also introduce a new concept that we call malicious adjustment time administration which I'll define a bit later on. Also we're gonna try and go with the live demo and finally show some integrations and takeaways from our talk. All right so let's take a few minutes to discuss Keros. So Keros is a ticket based authentication protocol. Say some domain user wants to access some application server in the domain how the authentication process work. First of all the Keros client will issue an address request to the domain controller requesting a special ticket to a service called the Care PGD. In response you will get a special ticket called the ticket granting ticket which is then used in the second stage. So the second stage would be the client sending a TGS request to the ticket granting service. This time requesting a ticket for that specific service that he wanted access to. So he will attach the ticket granting ticket here along with additional authentication data and if the authentication is successful he will get in return that service ticket for that specific service. Third and final stage would be using that ticket to access that application service. So the thing to remember here is the difference between the ticket granting ticket and the service ticket. While the service ticket can only be used to access that specific service, the ticket granting ticket can be used in multiple TGS requests to request more service tickets and access more domain resources. So a ticket granting ticket in a way is more powerful than a regular service ticket and it is sort of the master ticket for every user. This is why attackers would usually target those tickets since it can allow them to access more domain resources. Alright let's move on to Keros delegation. So first of all why is delegation needed? So it's needed in scenarios in which an application needs to reuse user credentials. Let's take for example a user authenticating to some web server which then in return needs to access some SQL server and perform some operations on behalf of that user. So the question is how can the web server access that SQL server on behalf of the user since the web server is not aware of the user credentials and also we don't want it to be. So for those scenarios exactly is why the delegation mechanism was introduced. It means that the web server will be allowed to delegate Keros tickets to the SQL server. Technically this means that the web server is going to be able to request for service tickets on behalf of other users. So in this case the web server would request a service ticket to that SQL server on behalf of the authenticating user. Third stage would be just accessing the SQL server using that ticket and performing any operations using the user's privileges. So as you can hear this is not a trivial functionality since it allows the servers to impersonate other users and use their privileges so defining it requires additional privileges which we'll discuss a bit later on. So there are two types of delegations. The first one is the unconstrained delegation which means that a single server can request tickets to any other service in the domain. As you can hear this is way too much power for a single service and it's not recommended to use on any account which is not a domain controller. This is exactly why the constrained delegation functionality was introduced. It means that a single service can only perform delegation to a single service or a few services which were defined in advance. So this makes a lot more sense. It means that a service would only be allowed to request for service tickets on behalf of other users only to specific services. This is the scenario that we'll focus on today. All right so let's see how attackers can gain persistence in active directory environments. First of all just a quick look at the attack stages. Attackers get into the network. They do not have any privileges. They do not have any access to any domain resources and the first stage would be to search for that initial access which usually comes in the form of credentials. So they send any phishing emails or anything else and at the end they would get either a domain account or a local system access to one of the domain computers. Second stage would be moving from that domain account, regular domain user to a domain admin. So this is the lateral movement phase. They perform a lot of recon. They move from one machine to the next each time dumping more credentials using them to connect to more machines until they finally reach the credentials of the domain admin. So usually this stage does not take more than 48 hours and unfortunately in a lot of times it takes even a lot less since admin credentials as you know as not as well secured as they should be. Also monitoring systems many times focus on this stage to catch attackers so the attackers might get busted some year along the way. However if all detections fail it's very important to be aware of that last and final stage which is a last chance to get the attackers in our environment. So the third and final stage would be getting from that domain admin account to full persistence of the environment. First of all why is it a domain admin account not enough to already gain persistence? Well what happens if that domain admin account is discovered and its password is reset? So attackers are gonna lose their high privileges and they're gonna start this entire process all over again. This is why attackers would like the moment they have the domain admin credentials to make sure that they would remain and have those high privileges for as long as possible without being detected. And this is exactly the stage that we will focus on. What attackers might do once they already have that domain administrator to ensure that even if they lose a whole of that account they would be able to elevate their privileges at any stage. Alright so let's discuss what attackers might do to get from a domain admin to full persistence in the Active Directory environment. Before moving on to the methods we want to talk to you today let's just mention shortly a few of the common methods that attackers may use today. One of the most common methods is to of course dump the entity as did file from the Active Directory which contains all domain secrets, all user hashes they can later on use to access any domain resource. Also they can use the golden ticket attack in which they forge a ticket granting ticket for an administrative account later on use it to request more service tickets and access more domain resources. Also there is the skeleton key or any other backdoor which can be left on the domain controller. So each of those has its own weaknesses for example replication requests using the DRS UAPI from a non-domain controller machine can be detected by analyzing network traffic. Also there are some ways to detect crafted tickets and any backdoor that is left on the domain controller has its own signature for example the skeleton key can be detected by an encryption downgrade activity from the domain controller. So those are just some of the methods that attackers use today to gain persistence and today we want to discuss a few different methods which all rely on the new concept that we want to introduce to you today which is called the malicious just-in-time administration. So before discussing about the malicious concept let's mention what the just-in-time administration concept means. So it's not recommended to have users that have permanent high privilege in the environments since obviously those serve as very valuable targets for attackers. Attackers would target those users that have permanent high privileges and would enable them to gain access to any domain resource. For this reason exactly the JIT administration concept was introduced it means that users will not have permanent high privileges in the environment. However at any stage if a user requires high privileges to perform an operation he would request those privileges if he's authorized to get them he would get them just for a limited amount of time usually just a few hours and when the time period expires the high privileges would be revoked. So if the user would need those high privileges again he would need to go through this entire process once again. So as you can see this reduces the attack surface since it makes the life of the attackers a bit harder it's gonna be harder to find a user that has the privileges of that domain admin. So while this concept was introduced to protect the environment from attackers a very similar concept can be abused by attackers in order to evade most of the detection mechanisms that are in place today. This is exactly what brings us to the malicious just-in-time concept. So what this concept means is that attackers might have limited access in the environment. However at any stage they would be able to perform a few short steps in order to regain those high privileges perform any malicious operations and then immediately erase the footprints the lethal traces from the environment that they ever had those privileges in order to to avoid all the detections that might be in place in the system. So we're going to talk about what attackers might do when they have the domain admin account in order to ensure themselves they would be able to perform a malicious general operation at any time and regain those high privileges possibly without being detected. So we'll show three scenarios to illustrate this concept. The first is the delegation scenario and then we'll discuss two concepts involving the admin as the holder object. So at this stage Eagle will discuss the first delegation scenario and I'll come back in a bit later. All right thank you Marina. How's everybody doing so far? All right we're now going to explore several malicious JIT attack scenarios but those scenarios are just the tip of the iceberg what can be done by using the JIT concept. I'd like to emphasize that the malicious JIT is just a concept which can be implemented in many different ways. So I hope the following examples will give you some ideas as a base that you can expand and develop on later on. So let's begin this section by reviewing the Tuki concept which relates to object security. So almost everything in Active Directory is an object and those objects need to be protected from unauthorized access. So there are several different security mechanisms which protects those Active Directory objects and one of the main ones is called the access control list. So an access control list is a list of access control entries or ACEs and each ACE in access control identifies security principle and specifies the access write allow the night for that account. So basically access control is a list of permissions for specific users on that object. So in addition to an access list we have something called an object ownership or an object owner. The owner of an object can modify permissions and give other users the right to take ownership or have full control over that object. So a short example would be if a user receives a new laptop from the Help this team and he joined that laptop to the Active Directory what happened behind this scene is that a new computer account object will be created and the owner of that computer account will be the user because this user was the first one created that object. The first one touches that object. In some other cases when IT staff create an object in Active Directory by default that administrator group will be the owner of those objects. So what is so special about object ownership? Well an owner of an object has a special permission which allow him to regain himself full read and write permission to that object. So basically if you are an owner of an object you can always regain yourself full permissions also we can gain this permission to other user accounts. So now that we have explored those two concepts we can move to our first attack scenario. So before giving in I would like to mention that each attack scenario we show you today is divided into two main parts. The first part will explain what steps need to be followed in order to remain persistent in environments during the time that attacker have a full domain privileges and the second stage explain what steps need to be followed in order to regain those privileges after losing the access to the environment. So let's get going by showing how attackers can adopt the malicious GIT concept and abuse the Kerberos delegation mechanism. So the first step attackers need to follow will be adding a new computer account and you're probably asking yourself so why do we need to create a new computer account we can use just an existing computer account but actually we prefer to create a new computer account because we're only creating an Active Directory object so there is no physical computer behind it and in that way the encryption key of that computer account will be generated once and attackers can then save this encryption key and this is important because we're going to use this computer account to authenticate again the domain control later on. In addition to that attackers need to change the owner of that computer account to some account that they hold on to and in our example we're going to use a malicious user just a regular domain user we created so as you see on the screen we created a new computer account which is called the client one and the owner of that computer account is the malicious user. So just to sum up we added a new computer account and changed its owner to the user account in the attacker possession. Later on also the attackers needed to save the encryption key of that computer account and we also changed the owner of that computer account so attackers can regain themselves full privileges to that computer account object. So although the attackers can regain full right new permission to that object there are a few special attributes and properties which allow which require additional permissions and additional user right and because we are showing you today the delegation scenario this malicious user will need to have a special user right so the next step will be going to the domain controller group policy and searching for a special user right which is called enable computer and user accounts to be trusted for delegation so we register our malicious user to possess this special user right we're showing you it in the GUI but it can be done easily using PowerShell or some other scripting language and now the attackers will be able to edit any delegation properties and attributes on that computer account object. All right that's all the steps that attackers need to prepare in advance in order to be ready for the malicious G2 operation so now we're going to discuss the second stage in which we will explain what steps need to be followed in order to regain those privileges so right now we have a computer account and the owner of that computer account is the previously created the malicious user account and but actually we don't have any effective read or we have read permission but we don't have any right permission on that object so the first step will be regaining our self full permission to that object after that we can edit any property of that object so we're just showing you that we added this malicious user into the access list of that computer account object. All right next step will be searching a special attribute which is called the msds allow to delegate to this attribute is basically a list of service principal names to which this specific computer account is allowed to delegate to meaning to which services this computer account is allowed to request service tickets on behalf of other users so we're going to use this computer account like a service and this computer account will will impersonate some user so it will request tickets on behalf of domain users so you can see that we added a special service principal name which is called the CARB TGT so as Marina mentioned in the intro section before a user can request specific service tickets they first need to grant themselves the ticket granting ticket and the way to do that will be approaching the CARB TGT service this is basically a service which represents the KDC the CARB ROSE mechanism so if authentication is successful the user will receive a valid ticket granting ticket with this ticket he can request additional service tickets so we added this CARB TGT service to the list and now we can use this computer account to act on behalf of other users and request approach this CARB TGT service so we're going to impersonate the administrator account so we're gonna request a ticket granting ticket on behalf of the administrator account in if everything goes well the domain controller will return a valid ticket granting ticket so meaning now attackers have full access to any resources in the domain environment for the next 10 hours and this ticket also can be renewed by default for the next seven days so with a few steps attackers are able to regain themselves full access to the domain environment so last step to complete our malicious githcon the last step will be removing footprint and removing traces so we need to remove the CARB TGT service principle name from this attribute and remove our malicious user from the access list of that computer account object so the only thing left will be this computer account the new computer account we created and the owner of that computer account which belong to malicious user so now we're gonna show you a short demo of this attack all right so don't worry if you haven't been able to follow all the technicalities we'll show a live demo which would hopefully be a bit more clear and show every single step that eagle just explained all right so as we said we have just make a we have two steps in a malicious gith scenario first of all what attackers and I do once they have the domain admin account in order to ensure that they can regain high privileges and at a later stage and what happens once they lost lost those admin privileges and they want to regain them so the first stage attackers gain that domain admin what does they need to do in order to prepare the environment for for a malicious gith operation so first of all eagle created here a new computer account called client one and as you can see the malicious user is not part of the ACL of this computer however if we examine more carefully we can see that our malicious user is the owner of this object so all we have now is just a simple computer account with a user as its owner and this computer of course is not allowed to perform the ligation so we just have a normal computer account nothing suspicious about this any user can usually add up to 10 domain computers to the domain second thing would be adding that malicious user is not a domain admin just a regular domain account that is under the control of the attackers and grant him the special permission to edit the delegation attributes of active directory objects so here we added our malicious user and by default only the administrators should be present in that group policy so what happens next is that the attackers have lost their domain admin privileges and they want to regain them by performing a malicious gith operation so now we're connected from a remote machine in hold of the attackers as the malicious user just a regular domain user without administrative privileges as you can see he cannot access the c drive on the domain controller no spells no special privileges there so we have a few tickets here in memory all the tickets are for that malicious user we're gonna go ahead and delete all those tickets from the memory right so we're gonna clear the tickets cash great so now we do not have any tickets and what we're gonna do is we have prepared a script in advance which performs our malicious operation let's go ahead and run our script real quick and see how it affected the domain controller environment so let's get back to the domain controller and let's see what happened as a result of this script so first of all we added the malicious user to the acl of that computer now granting granting him full control of that object second thing and most important is that now this computer is enabled to perform delegation you can see in the UI that you do not see any services to which this computer is allowed to perform delegation to however if we look at the attribute editor we can see that this computer is allowed to perform delegation to the care tgt account meaning we have now a computer account that is able to obtain ticket granting tickets on behalf of other users so of course the last stage would be simply getting a ticket granting ticket for an administrative account using this privilege so in order to do this we use the open source tool mit care boroughs we didn't use any windows apis and as a result we can see that we got the ticket of an administrator all right let's take a look at the files that we have in our directory as we can see we have a ccache file that was created right now as a result from us running this script so this file contains all the tickets we got as a result from running our command what we're going to do in the next stage is load those tickets from the ccache file to our current sessions memory okay so we use the mit care roles for that as well and let's take a look at the tickets we have in memory now so as you can see now we have a ticket to the care tgt for the administrative account let's see whether we can access the c drive now and we were successful now we were able to access the thank you so yeah life demos are hard but so we were able to access the c drive as that computer using that computer account so by a simple thing is using that computer account along with that special user right we were able to get an administrative ticket all we need is to just get the ticket and immediately immediately we can remove all traces for from the environment that we ever performed this operation meaning we will immediately disable this computer from performing delegation and removing the user from the acl of that computer object so we saw how you can so just one example of how you can perform a malicious due to operation get a ticket granting ticket immediately remove the footprints and then you can use this ticket along with renewals for up to a week so this was our first example now ego will discuss the second attack scenario thanks marina so technical problems are common here as you understand just a sec we'll try that again all right so have a look at the attack delegation scenario we can now move on and speak about our admin as they hold their manipulation so recently there are a lot of online buzz about how the attackers can abuse access this active directory access list and how those accesses can be used in order to elevate privileges and or remain persistent in the environment so to illustrate how access list elevation or privilege work let's look at the built-in domain administrator group if a compromised account has right permission on this group object attackers will be able to add new members as needed and get full domain access but actually all the built-in groups are protected by special mechanism which is called the admin as they hold your mechanism so what happened behind the scenes that we have a special process which is called the sd pro process and this process runs every hour on all the protected groups and their members recursively and inspect the access list of those group if for some reason there is a new entries on those access list and that's the pro process basically compare those access list against the access list which defined on the admin as they hold their object so an admin as they hold their object is just a rebel active directory object which which is its its own access list and this access list acts like a template so every time as the process run he inspect the access list of the protected groups and compares those access list against the access list of the admin as they hold their if there are any new changes to those access list he will copy the access list from the admin as they hold their object and replace the access list defined on the protected group so actually as you can see it's it's not so it's not so simple to edit or add new entries to access list of protected groups there are also sorry about that i'm a bit nervous today so there are also a non-technique which explains how attackers what how attackers can use the admin as they hold their object in order to remain persistent in the environment so instead of editing the protected group access list what attackers can do they can go and change the access list of the admin as they hold their object and in that way after one hour when the sd process runs and he will copy the new entry of that access list to all top protected groups meaning attackers will have again full access to any resources but this technique considered to be a bit noisy and because it's propagate to all the building groups so today we're going to show you a bit different technique which does not involve any editing of the admin as they hold their object instead what we're going to do is just exclude one of the building groups there are four building groups which can be excluded from the sd prop mechanisms you see those on the screen one of those is the backup operator group which is also considered to be a highly sensitive group so in order to perform this operation attackers need to search for a special attribute which is called the ds realistic attribute and exclude this group so we excluded this group from the sd prop inspection and now when the sd process will run he will bypass this specific group so now attackers can go ahead and add a new entry to the access list of this building group but they adding the only one entry only to this specific group without affecting any other building groups so it's a more stealthy technique so after adding a malicious user to the accesses of that group attackers can add themselves as a member of that group and the backup operator group provided special permissions to its members which allow them to backup any domain machine including the domain controllers so attackers can authenticate against the domain controller down the locker hard drive which also include the ntds.d file which is the active directory database and extracts from them all the necessary user accounts so performing by performing a few steps attacker can easily regain themselves again full access to the domain environment so the last step will be of course removing this malicious user from being a member of the backup operator group and that will complete the malicious read concept so now marina will present you the last attack scenario so the third and final scenario also deals with the manipulation of the admin as the holder in order to gain persistence so in this step all the attackers might do when they have that domain admin account is simply change the owner of the admin as the holder object so here we're changing the owner of our malicious to our malicious user that we used before just a regular domain user not a domain admin so what brought us into looking into this owner attribute so one of the other steps that attackers use to gain persistence in the environment was simply by adding a new domain domain admin account to the environment however since high privileged group memberships started to be monitored it's not that easy to get away with the new domain admin this is why now there was a lot of talk about how attackers can gain persistence by abusing ACLs also Will and Andy gave a great talk about that at Blackhead and Defcon and so if for example you have an ACL granting you full control of the domain admins group you can get to a domain admin account in a single step by simply adding a new domain member domain admin member however as a result we have now a new bunch of new tools emerging that are scanning the environment and attempting to find any ACLs misconfiguration that might be abused by attackers this is why we took another step back and we're looking at the owner of the object which is not part of the ACL so for example if you have ownership over the domain admin group you can get to a domain admin privileges in two steps first of all you can grant yourself an access control entry giving you full control of that object and second stage simply just add a new domain admin so between those three attack techniques the owner attribute is the least monitored one and hopefully after this talk this will change so back to our example we just changed the owner of the admin as the holder object next step attackers lost their administrative privileges let's see how they can abuse the previous stage in order to perform a malicious jid operation so what they can do is that just before the SD proc process runs they would add a malicious user to the admin as the holder ACL granting him full control of the admin as the holder object since he's the owner of the objects he can add the ACL as he wants as ego explained what's going to happen when the SD proc process runs is that that this access control entry is going to be copied to all protected groups and users in the domain so now our malicious users user has full control of the domain environment specifically his full control of the domain admin group so obviously from this stage it's pretty easy to get to domain admin privileges he would simply add a new domain admin to an environment and get an administrative ticket granting ticket so in order to not raise any flags and complete entirely the malicious jid operation he would of course need to delete all traces from the environment immediately remove the traces so they would remove the malicious user from the ACL of the admin as the holder and in order to not keep that access control entry on all protected groups and users until the next time the SD proc process runs which should be in another hour they can just force the SD proc process to run which would immediately remove that malicious access control entry from all the protected groups and users so last step would be removing the malicious users from the domain admin's group so as you can see the access control entry and the group membership was present in the environment for just a few seconds which was enough for attackers to get a ticket granting ticket and potentially avoid any detection mechanisms which are scanning the environment so we showed an example about how the owner of the admin as the holder object can be abused to gain persistence but of course a similar manner in a similar manner you can use this to gain persistence by editing the owner of any protected group in the environment all right so now that we've discussed the attack techniques let's discuss some of the mitigations if you're a defender let's see what you can do in order to protect yourself from such attack scenarios so first of all we want to detect any delegation misconfiguration of course we need to monitor the group policy that enables account accounts to edit the delegation attributes of active directory objects and so we saw what this privileges does we really need to monitor this and only domain admins or administrators should be able to do this also we need to monitor the accounts that are trusted to perform delegation who are the accounts that are allowed to request service tickets on behalf of other users also of course we need to monitor the allow to delegate to attribute which states to which services exactly this account is allowed to perform delegation no reason for the pair tgt account to be present there whatsoever another important thing is that on every active directory object there is a checkbox stating that this account is sensitive and cannot be delegated what it means is that even if a service is allowed to perform delegation and request service tickets on behalf of other users it will not be able to request service tickets on behalf of those sensitive users so we we recommend to turn this on for any high privileged users in the environment in order to not allow services to use those accounts privileges also we need to monitor the admin as the holder object of course the access control list which is very important and is then copied to all protected users and groups in the domain also the owner of this object since we saw how attackers can abuse this and of any other protected group in the domain also monitor the excluded groups from the admin as the holder protection monitor they they're in cl as well why they're excluded and their access control list of course we recommend using any event logging to see whether there was a suspicious change on any active directory object so what we want you to take from this talk whether you're from the blue team or the red team is the malicious just in time concept so in which attackers may not have constant high privileges in the environment however at any stage they have the ability to regain their privileges regain high privileges perform any of malicious operations and then immediately delete all the traces in order to avoid most of the detection systems that are in place so we showed a few examples that illustrate this concept but of course it can be used and extended in a lot of similar scenarios so as a defender it's very important to be aware of any such escalation path and when you scan the environment to see whether attackers currently hold persistence of the environment don't just scan the stage in which attackers already have that domain admin account but also monitor all the stages in between which might allow him to lead to quick privilege escalation at any time all right so this is all we have time for thanks for listening guys


Hi everyone, Linda here from ITTT back again with another live session. Welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for joining, for tuning in, for listening. If you're listening to this as a podcast episode, thank you, thank you so much. And today's topic, we're gonna dive into the different types of TEFL and TESOL courses because there's a bunch of different ones. And if you're new to this, especially if you're new to this, you might not be sure which course is right for you. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna dive in, we're gonna talk about it all and I hope you enjoy. And don't forget to like and subscribe as always. Yeah, and we also mentioning that right off the bat, we do have a 30% off discount code that you can also take advantage of. So what you can do is you can scan this QR code that you see on the screen right now or I also have a link for you. And if you're listening to this on a podcast, you'll find the link in the podcast description as well. So I'm gonna share the link with you guys right now in the comment section. It ends with, oh, ends with Facebook Live minus Linda. And it just added a bunch of other things. So one more time right here. Yeah, FB Live minus Linda, this is the code. It will get you 30% off any Teflur TESOL course from ITTT and it's the middle of November, towards the end of November, towards the end of the year. So it's a great chance, great opportunity, great time to get started with a Teflur TESOL course, to get that certification that you're ready for the new year for all the new application deadlines, to teaching programs, all the new job opportunities, all of that. So it's a good time to kind of get into it right now. So yeah, scan this code, take advantage or save it for a little bit later for after this live session. So hopefully after this live session, you'll have a better idea of which course is right for you, which course you should take and you're gonna have a lot of fun. Crystalene, hi, good to see you. Crystalene says I'm on the diploma course now. Congratulations, I hope you're enjoying it. Let us know how you're liking it. And good luck with everything, that's amazing. So that's actually the highest level course that we offer, so congratulations. You're gonna be a pro after this one, very, very cool. Yeah, and just continuing on with that, let me know guys, where are you watching from today? Where are you at? How are you feeling? What's the weather like? Let me know, I'm always very curious. You might also notice I have the sniffles a little bit. I have a little bit of a cold. It's getting really cold in Korea. We're kind of went from pretty nice temperatures and then overnight to really freezing temperatures. There's no real in between. So yeah, it's hard on the bodies over here. Gosh, Crystalene, I also got my bachelor's through ITTT now too, yay, congratulations. That's amazing. Maybe I should do like an interview with you and you should come on here in the live session and talk about your experience. Let me know if you're up for that. I would love to hear all about it and I think it's gonna be very beneficial for other people who watch too. So if you wanna do that, let me know, Crystalene. I think that'd be great because you've taken all of the courses now.  So if you're up for that for real, seriously, then let me know and maybe we can have an interview together. That'd be really, really great. Let me know. I'm very curious. Cool, cool, cool, cool. So, oh yeah, I would, I totally would. Well, okay, maybe we can find a time and schedule things maybe after the holidays and everything that'd be so cool. Let me know. Yes, I'm totally down for that too. Cool, and I'm sure everybody else would love to hear your experience as well. Cool, all right, let's do it. All right, anybody else here, except for Crystalene, let me know if you wanna share where are you watching from today? Where are you at in the world? How are you doing? How's everything going? And I am in South Korea. Just a little bit of an intro here. I don't know if this is too small or what, but yeah. So, my name is Linda Dunsmore. My online handle, I guess, is at Linda Goes East. You can find me especially on Instagram. You can also find my website, lindagoseast.com. I'm originally from Germany slash the US. My mom is German, my dad's American and I'm based in South Korea. I've been living in Asia pretty much since 2012. I lived in China for a little while and then came to Korea and I've been here now for eight and a half years. So, time goes by super fast. I'm enjoying it very much and call it my home. And I'm also a Teflon T-cell marketing professional for ITTT, I've done that for quite a long time. I started out as a teacher, taking the course and then also kind of ended up working for ITTT. It just kind of, I kind of just snuck my way in. And ITTT stands for International Teflon T-cell Training. And ITTT is really one of the oldest ones or longest established of these kinds of providers, Teflon T-cell course providers. Been around since the 1990s. Yeah, the website is tefloncourse.net. I'm sure many of you guys know already, have taken courses, all of that. So, don't wanna bore you with that, but yeah, anybody who's new, this is what we're doing today. This is what we're gonna talk about. And we have Adam here. Adam, I think is new. Hi Adam, are you watching for the first time? Messaging from Taiwan. Oh, I miss Taiwan. I've been only one time and I loved it and I really wanna go back. It's such a beautiful place. Are you teaching in Taiwan or are you from Taiwan? Very curious or are you doing something else in Taiwan? It can also be the case. Let me know. Interesting. We have Amitava. Hi Amitava. Also one of our regular viewers here. So good to see you again. I'm doing very well. How are you doing? It's 7.07 a.m. in Kolkata, India. It's a bit cool in the mornings and nights now. Yeah, here too. And here actually in Korea, they're predicting maybe the first snow of the year today, later today. Now it's beautiful. We have some clouds with the sun is shining. The sky is blue. So it's nice. Yesterday I was actually, I went to Seoul. If you go to my Instagram at Linda goes east, you can check it out. I put that in my stories. But I went to Seoul yesterday and it was the worst weather. It was raining. It was great. It was really, really bad. But it was also interesting. I went to the palace there. You could check it out and all the guards, they have these kind of like traditional guards in front of the palace. I don't know if you've been to Korea or you've seen pictures. And because it was raining, they were all wearing like sort of the traditional rain clothes from a long time ago. It was very interesting. So I posted that in my stories. So you can check it out. It's also a cool vibe just to see it in the rain. But yeah, it's much nicer today. So I wish I went today, but I'm here for you guys. Sacrificing. Not just kidding. All right, Adam says, I've watched a few episodes from Canada. Oh, okay. Maybe you've never commented before. I don't remember your name or maybe you changed your name or, I don't know, different account, I don't know. But I appreciate it from Canada, living in Taiwan. Nice. Very nice. All right, cool. Well, keep your comments coming. Adam says, I'm missing the snow, but not the cold. Yeah, I guess the weather is quite nice throughout the whole year in Taiwan, right? I used to live in Guangzhou, kind of near Hong Kong. I think maybe the weather is kind of similar. I don't know, but it's also, it wasn't very cold there. But I do like the snow. I do like the four seasons in Korea. The leaves changing. We just had beautiful foliage and now we're gonna have some snow. So it's nice. It's nice. And then the spring is actually my favorite with all the cherry blossoms. So that's what I really love. Anyway, we can chat about that later if you have any questions about Korea, about all that you can ask, of course, in the comments or later in the Q&A session. But let's focus on today. So this is today's agenda, what we're gonna talk about. So we're gonna obviously cover the different courses, the different course formats. So we're gonna talk about online courses. We're gonna talk about in-person or in-class Tefal TESOL courses. We're also gonna talk about combined courses. We're gonna look at each type. We're gonna look at the pros and the cons of each to kind of, to help you figure out which course format might be right for you. And also we're gonna look at a couple of different online courses as well. Then we're gonna also answer some really common questions that a lot of people have. For example, what's the difference between Tefal, TESOL, SELTA, all of these things. The other thing is if qualified teachers need a Tefal certification, we also get that asked quite a lot. Do Tefal certificates expire? And then where are Tefal teachers in demand? And then of course, you can ask your questions, Q&A time, anything that you're curious about, about, more about today's topic or just something else related to teaching or something that I can help you with, with Korea maybe or anything else. So sounds good I hope. Usually these live sessions last anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. If you don't have that much time, you can always come back and watch the replay. All of our live sessions remain on our Facebook page and on our YouTube channel. You can watch them. We also always turn our live sessions into podcast episodes. So if you're into podcasts, check us out on any kind of podcast platform really, wherever you're listening. It's the Tefal and TESOL podcast by ITTT. You can check that out as well. And without further ado, we can jump right in without before, before checking out, I would have us comment here. Yes, I've checked your stories on Instagram and read your replies to my wishes. No, I have not yet been to South Korea but I would love to surely meet, go and visit you at your present hometown, sometime in the distant or in your future. Of course, anybody who is visiting Korea, hit me up, let me know and then maybe we can meet up as well. That would be fun. All right, great.  Yesterday the weather was very bad and I hope my cold's not coming back. But yeah, I have some peach and Oolong tea, Oolong, right from Taiwan, very famous. So I might have to drink a couple of times throughout this live session and I might cough. So please bear with me. Yeah, are we ready? Let's jump in. So first off also, I wanna talk about the TEFL course requirements. Is there anything you need to have do before you can take a TEFL course? That's also one of the questions that we get regularly. So let's start off with that. There are no really big or hard requirements for taking a TEFL or a TESOL course. So anyone who's fluent in English and over 18 is eligible and can take the course. So you don't have to have a degree, you don't have to have teaching experience, you don't have to be a native English speaker, anything like that. No previous experience or qualifications are required. Anyone can sign up as long as you're fluent in English, so that means you understand the course content and you're over 18, you are good to go. And the registration process also is free. You can fill out the application and it does not commit you in any way. So the link that I shared earlier with you with the 30% off, for example, this is, it will lead you to the application page and you can fill this out, no commitment for free and yeah, this doesn't commit you in any way until you pay. And then you're like, you get your login details and you can start with your course journey, basically that's how it works. So really simple, really quick upfront, these are the requirements, it's not very strict. You just have to think about your own abilities. Do you speak English well enough to take this course and then you're good to go. Are you interested in teaching? Do you wanna do this? Are you serious about it? And then you can take the course, perfect. All right, then let's have a look at the different course formats. I already mentioned that we're gonna look at online courses. We're gonna look at in-person course courses and then we're also gonna look at combined courses. These are the three course types that are typically offered by Tefl and T-Soul course providers and also by ITTT. So, and all of these are slightly different. They have their pros, they have their cons. So we're gonna look at all of these so that you can later determine which course is right for you. So, yeah, let's jump right in and let's start off with the online courses. So first off, what is an online course? If you've never taken an online course before, I know that when I took this course back in 2014, I had never taken an online course before. There's a long time ago, it was not really, yeah, even at university, I never took an online course or anything. So that was really new to me. So, yeah, it's basically a course and the online courses, they range from basic 120-hour certifications to more advanced diplomas and also specialized packages. We're gonna get into that in a little bit later. And yeah, you can work on this course on your computer anywhere with an internet connection. And this allows for just really good flexibility in learning. So you can also do this on your phone, on your tablet, wherever you are, also on the go when you're traveling, wherever you feel like most comfortable in learning and studying, you can do it. And there's also tutor support, a tutor support option that also ensures guidance and assistance. So this is really great for people who maybe aren't really good with studying independently. So you need somebody there to kind of push you a little bit or somebody you can ask questions to when you have questions, that's really good. But if you're somebody who can study on your own independently, then you probably don't need the tutor support, but there's just two, two different options here. So that's an online course. And yeah, I've taken the online course. Maybe also how long it takes typically. It depends on the course, right? The more hours the course is, the longer it will take. But the standard 120 hour course, you have six months to complete this course, but most people actually finish it much faster. So when I took this course, it was like, I was already working at the time. So I didn't have, you know, every day all day to study only a couple of hours a week that I put effort in. And it took me between three and four months to complete this course roundabout. So yeah, if you have a lot more time, if you wanna study more, you can finish it much faster in a month maybe, but we also always recommend not going too fast because you don't wanna overdo it and then, you know, just swallow all the information without really internalizing it. So it's very important to take your time and to really work through the units mindfully and really learn it and not just go through it and take all the tests and then be done with it. So that's important. And also maybe at the end, so the structure kind of these courses with ITTT is that after every unit that you work through, so every course has a set of units. For example, the 120 hour course has 20 units and you work through those and after every unit, there is a short assessment test and then at the end, all of your results from every assessment tests are added up together. And if you reach the passing rate of 75%, you pass the course. If not, you don't pass, but normally most people, our passing rate is very high. So most people will pass this course. If you don't for some reason, you have another chance to retake it as well. I think two or three times. You can actually retake it. And then at the end, you will also submit a final summative task. So that's a short essay about a teaching related topic. We provide you with, I think it's like a hundred topics that you could choose from to write about. So you don't have to come up with your own idea. You could just pick one that we provide you with, but it's like a hundred topics you could choose from. So, yeah. All right. Yeah, and that's basically it. And then let's talk a little bit about the advantages and disadvantages here of an online course. And maybe you can figure out if this is the right course format for you. So advantage, I just mentioned that already is just the flexibility, right? So you can study at your own pace and accommodate personal and professional commitments. So somebody who is working already, somebody who has children or if you have any other commitments, this course format is really great because you don't have to be online at like a certain time of day to join a class or anything like this.  So it's really, really good for that. Then the next point here is accessibility. So yeah, really anyone with an internet connection can enroll and this also removes geographical barriers versus the in-class or in-person courses where you have to go to a in-class center and maybe there's no center near you then you have to travel, it's more expensive and it also takes longer. So this format really gives everybody anywhere in the world the chance as long as you have an internet connection you can sign up and take the course. So that's really, really good. And then another advantage here are the diverse course options. So we have very specialized courses and packages that really cater to very specific teaching contexts and preferences. So for example, there's the business English course, there's the teaching English online course, there's the teaching English to young learners course. There's shorter format courses. If you, for example, want to teach English just for a year, you're not sure if you want to do this long term, you can start out with the regular 120 hour course. If you're sure like I want to make this my career, I want to do this forever, I'm serious about it, you can take a longer format course. So yeah, diverse course options are really an advantage with the online course with the in-class course, they just usually have one curriculum, one format, one, yeah, one type. With the online courses, there's many different ones. Disadvantages of course, because it's online it lacks the face-to-face interaction, right? So there are limited opportunities for in-person interaction with other instructors and peers and of course the students. That's what you get with a in-class or a combined course. If you're somebody who really wants to get that teaching practice in then that's something that this course format will lack. However, there are other options you can do. There's an add-on, you can actually book that also covers teaching practice, also online remotely, you can also add that. Or what I personally also recommend is you take this course first and then maybe you start out by either tutoring somebody face-to-face or you start out teaching English online. You sign up for a teaching platform and you gain your initial teaching experience that way online. That's also a really, really great way to go about. Then also a point I touched on earlier is the self-motivation that's required. So if you're somebody, you know, if you take an online course you will need self-discipline and motivation to stay on track without in-person accountability. So if you're somebody who can't really study at your own pace independently, if you need somebody who pushes you then an online course might be a little bit more challenging but then again you can have that tutored option as well where you have an online tutor. But if you prefer learning like in a group with other people physically there then maybe an in-class or combined course might be a better option for you. And yeah, variable quality here. So not all online courses they actually maintain consistent quality. So learners, you must research and select reputable providers for a valuable learning experience. You've probably seen that before.  There's hundreds of different providers these days, right? Back in the day it was like ITTT and a couple of others but now it's so many. So how do you know which course is the best, right? It's very difficult to do. So that's why obviously I would recommend ITTT. We've been around for a long time. We have great accreditations, affiliations, partnerships and just go with some course that has all of these same things, right? ITTT is not the only one who has great accreditations and all that but there are a lot of providers out there who don't have these things. And maybe you've seen these $20 group on TEFL courses or the TEFL courses that promise to be free and all that. And usually when it comes to these things it's what you pace, what you get. So I like to always compare this with a budget airline if somebody's listening to this and I'd say this probably every time. So I'm sorry if this is annoying but it's kind of what I always compare it to the ticket price is very cheap but then you have to pay for your boarding pass to be issued. You have to pay for your luggage. You have to pay for your seat. You have to pay for water. You have to pay for all these little things. And then at the end it's actually the same price as like a regular airline perhaps or even more expensive. So that's kind of how I always compare it to if that makes any sense. So yeah, this is online courses and also some people have the question of our online courses also just as recognized as in-class courses and the answer is yes, they are. They are absolutely, especially now also in our post COVID era where everything went online. And yeah, I mean, it's 2023. This was definitely different 15, 20 years ago where online courses might've been a little bit more frowned upon but these days really whether you take an online course you have an online course certificate or an in-person certificate. It really does not make much of a difference to anybody. And also on our certificates for ITTT it does not say that this was an online course that you took. It never on the certificate does not say it all online course. It says Tefal Tiso course. It has the accreditation stamps on it. It has the hours that you took. It has your name on it and all of these things. So it does not say that it was taken online. Okay, thank you so much, Crystalline and Shauna here for talking in the comments here and Crystalline for sharing your advice with Shauna. I really appreciate that. So thank you so much. Yeah, great. I just can't catch up with your conversation now but yeah, I appreciate Crystalline sharing with Shauna what she knows, so that's great. All right, so these are the online courses. Let me have some more tea here. I think we're not quite done with the online courses. Yeah, I was gonna say. This is another important point I just talked about actually. Popularity surged post-pandemic. So the popularity of online courses has surged significantly post-pandemic also due to several reasons. Three different reasons here we also talked about just going over this real quick but also again, increased accessibility. Like we said, restriction on travel and in-person learning led to higher demand for online education. So a lot of actually in-person and in-class courses were canceled and then even more people now have online certifications. Again, the flexibility because you can't travel you couldn't travel during COVID. So even more people also have taken to online courses and the global reach. It's just easier access for individuals worldwide to obtain the certification. Again, without geographical limitations. So just what I just said, talked about that even during COVID, this online course phenomenon increased even more and it's just as recognized today. Excuse me. And now we're gonna look at the three most popular online TEFL TESOL course options. First one here is the 120, now I realized is this hard to read? I should have made this also in a white font. I apologize, it's even hard to read for me. Anyway, so we wanna start off with the 120 hour course. 120 hours is basically the international standard. You don't wanna do a TEFL course that's under 100 hours. Everything under 100 hours is just kind of for unpaid volunteer teaching positions most of the time. So you wanna go with the 120 hour. 120 hours is also often a requirement in many countries for a work visa, for English teaching visa. So this is the minimum. And this is also the best, the most popular option and best for new teachers. Yeah, like I said, it meets the minimum hour requirements and also still remains highly popular. It's the most popular course for TEFL TESOL. It includes principal resources for comprehensive learning. So you get a whole portfolio, lots of teaching materials you can print out, you can save on your computer in PDF format and you can later use in your own classroom and then it also obviously leads to an internationally accepted certification as to all of these. They're all internationally accredited, accepted. I've taken the scores in 2014. I worked with it in China and in Korea, always accepted, always very highly valued by the employers. They know the ITTT name. They're familiar with it and they appreciate it. Then, oh yeah, and also I put the pricing on here so you can see on the website, when you go to the website, TEFLCOURSE.NET, you'll see the price as $249 US dollars, but with today's discount, the 30% off that you see down here, it actually comes down to only 174. Actually, you can cancel that 30. I think you're only gonna pay 174. So that's with today's discount and I'm gonna share that one more time now. Maybe we've had somebody who joined, who didn't see this code in the beginning, so let me share that one more time with you guys. So you have it, it ends with FB Live minus Linda. This one, yeah, and that, well, so the green price is the price that you would get with today's discount. And then we have the 220 hour course package, which is my personal best overall TEFLCOURSE. This is also the one that I have. And actually when I took these courses, this course package did not exist yet, so I took all of these courses individually, which actually turned out to be more expensive than now with this package. So this course is currently 244 with today's discount and includes three courses. So you get the first option here, the 120 hour course is included. You would take this first with this course package and then you also get the 50 hour teaching business English and the 50 hour teaching English to young learners course with it. So really, really good. You get, yeah, the specializations for two of the most popular fields in EFL teaching, business English and teaching kids. Those are the two biggest fields in EFL teaching, right? Especially if you are coming to Asia, you're most likely going to teach kids and also most likely going to do some business teaching here and there as well. So having those two specializations is really, really going to help you. And this is why that's my favorite course package. Yeah, and it also just makes you stand out from other competitors with more training hours because you have more training hours. Because like I said, the 120 hour course is the standard. So everybody's going to have that basically. When they apply for teaching positions, I would say 80% of the people are going to have this course, right? And then 20% maybe are not going to have any certificate.  Or maybe 10% doesn't have it. And then 10% has something higher and you want to be in that 10%, right? You want to stand out from the crowd. So that's also one way to do it. Especially if your goal is to work in a highly competitive country, like or in a highly competitive teaching program like the JEP program in Japan, highly competitive, Korea Epic program, very competitive. All of these teaching programs that are competitive, the country cities that are competitive. If you want to go to China, Shanghai, Beijing, very competitive market there. So if you just have 120 hour course, it might be difficult. You can definitely enhance your chances if you have more hours on your resume. So that's one way to do it. And then we have the 370 hour, this is the diploma course. And this is best for career seekers. And let me explain in a minute, but Crystalene says, yes, JEP program is hard. Yes, it's hard to get in, very competitive. They only have one or two hiring seasons a year, thousands of people apply. So it's very competitive and you need something to stand out. All right, back to the 370 hour. Currently today with the discount 349 down from 499. So a big difference here. And like I said, the 370 hour course is the diploma course and it is best for career seekers. So if you're somebody who is sure about tethyl tiesol and yes, you wanna do this for the next 10 years, five to 10 years for sure minimum, then this is a really good course to take. It's geared also towards practicing teachers or already certified teachers. And it covers diverse subjects like English teaching history, syllabus. I have to read this from the other computers to spell to read here, sorry. Syllabus design, material creation, assessment strategies and classroom management. So many of these topics are also covered in the 120 hour course, but not to this extent. So the diploma course is diving in a lot deeper and it will also get you positions sort of like more managing or head teacher positions as well, especially in bigger schools around the world. They're looking for people who, you would be the person who would then manage all of the other foreign English teachers there, for example. So this is kind of what this course is also focusing on. Yeah. Crystaline says, these courses definitely prepared me for this. Are you currently like applying for JET? I know that the application deadline was in September. Did you apply? Crystaline, are you applying next year? What's your plan? Let me know. Cool. Or you can also keep that a secret for our interview. That'll also be good. Actually. All right, good. These were the online courses. So let's jump into in-person taffle-teasol courses. Also very popular, fun for many reasons. So let's talk about it. What's an in-class course? We talked about what a online course is and I think we understand that now and now what's an in-class taffle course? So in-class courses are exactly what it sounds like. It's in class. It is in a physical classroom, in a physical actual place, in a training center, where you go. Oh, Crystaline says the application is due tomorrow here. Oh, okay. Maybe I have some other information. I thought it was September, but anyway. Cool. So you applied, you filled everything out. I hope. Cool. Yeah. So with an in-class taffle course, you will go to an actual in-person training center. Training center of your choice. At ITTT, we have many different locations all around the world, every continent, except for like Antarctica, I think, but except that every continent. And you would go there and spend four weeks taking this intensive course, typically Monday to Friday, conducted in various exciting locations, like I said, and the in-class taffle course is immersive and lasts for four weeks. So you'd be there kind of studying Monday to Friday. Weekends are usually off. You get to be with like-minded other people who want to be English teachers. And there's just really great emphasis on practical learning. So these courses, they maintain a strong practical focus. You would also obviously go over all the theoretical content of the course and teaching English and things, but you also have that strong practical focus. So it aims to prepare you for teaching English using the communicative approach, where English is the sole language spoken in the classroom. And what's just great about these, and we're gonna talk about advantages, but typically these courses will be held at actual functioning English centers in a different place. So for example, in Japan and Tokyo and Rome, Paris, Germany, Seoul, Korea, you would go there and it's an actual language school. You would take the course, but then you also get to teach actual students from there. So that's very, very cool and very exciting. And that's obviously something that the online course doesn't offer. But that's also why an in-person course is also a lot more expensive. So the prices vary from location to location. So anywhere from like $1,000 to maybe 1,800, 900, depending on the location. And this does not include typically accommodation and flight, so you'd have to cover that as well. That's only the training for four weeks. So it's quite expensive compared to an online course. So it might not be for everybody, but it's great for somebody who like is sure, hey, I wanna teach English in Vietnam. And so I'm taking this four week in-class course, in-person course in Vietnam to get started, get my teaching experience in also network and maybe already scope out some schools. And a lot of times actually the in-class centers, they will also hire on people that they really like. Because when it comes to teaching English abroad, the turnover, so teachers leaving, schools hiring new teachers is very high. So every year there'll be people leaving, right? Some people just stay and teach English abroad for a year and then they go back or they move on to a different school, a different country. So the turnover is very, very high. So a lot of these schools, they take this opportunity, they train you and then they would also offer you a job right away. So that's also what a lot of people are doing. But you can also take a four week in-class course in any location also, if you don't wanna go and teach there, that's also fine. So yeah, advantages, disadvantages of an in-person class, in-person course. Of course we just said that face-to-face interaction. So you have direct contact with students, peers and also instructors. You get immediate feedback, you discuss, what did you do well, what didn't you do well, what should you improve upon? So you get a deeper understanding of your teaching techniques. Real classroom experience. So you have the opportunity to practice teaching with actual students, which is really good. Disadvantages of course, I also said that the higher cost, they are a lot more expensive. You need to fly there in accommodation, all of these things, limited flexibility. So of course these courses don't happen when you want, they are scheduled. They have dates, some training centers only offer these courses twice a year. Some every month, so it depends on the training center. So it has to fit your own schedule, right? Or you have to make the time to take a whole month off to go there and do that. And of course geographical limitations. So the access to these courses might be restricted by geographical location, they're far away from you. So not everybody will be able to attend perhaps. And also you have to think about visa situations and all of that. So it's a little bit more of a bigger undertaking for sure and also requires a bigger budget, but also has some great benefits for your resume, your career. So that is the in-person course, I think, is that it? Yes. And then we're gonna talk about the combined Tefal TESOL courses. So this type often gets overlooked. People talk about online courses and then in-person courses, but not so much about the combined course option. So let's dive into that. And this basically blends the online theory study at your own pace with in-class training. So this also allows for flexibility in your course completion within a six month period. So it offers multiple options. You can either get five, eight or 10 days of in-class practice, the in-class component, including observed teaching practice where you also get feedback and cater to various schedules and preferences. The completion of both online and in-class components results in a comprehensive Tefal certification and provides a solid foundation in English teaching techniques and practical classroom experience. So what this means is first, you will take a online course, the 120 hour course, you would take that online and then you have the opportunity to go to a in-class center for either five, eight or 10 days and get teaching practice in. You take all that you've learned during your 120 hour online course and then you put that into practice with real students again and you have an instructor, a trainer who will then provide you with feedback and things that you should approve upon and things like that. So this is the combined course and it's cheaper than an in-class course because it's shorter, five, eight or 10 days. So it's a lot more affordable than an in-class course but you still get that teaching practice in as well. So a lot of people like to do that as well. And yeah, advantages just real quick because I just said the same thing I think. Again, flexible, it blends the good things from both online and in-class components. So yeah, you take the online course first, flexible whenever you want and then you just have a couple of days that you need to commit to the training. You do get practical experience, like I said, with actual real students and this enhances your readiness for actual teaching environments, which is good. And you get a comprehensive certification. You have this online training but you also have that practical experience. Disadvantages is the limited in-class time so you obviously don't spend as many days in the center as with an in-class and in-person course for four weeks. So it's just five to 10 days, yeah, shorter. And then again, the location constraints. So the in-class or combined in-class options are limited to specific centers only. You can check that out on our website. So not all in-class centers also offer the combined course option. Some of them do both, but some of them not so you have to check it out. We actually have a lot of combined course options in the US and Canada. There's a lot there. A lot of North American students take this format but also in Europe and Asia as well. But not every in-class center offers this so you would have to check it out. Which location do you prefer? So do that at teflacourse.net. And this is the combined course and Crystalene says in-person teaching is stressful but a lot of fun. Yes, I agree. It is stressful but as a teacher you just have to jump in the cold water sometimes and just do it and get over with. And I feel like everybody who's teaching you kind of have your personal personality and then you have your teacher personality if that makes sense. You're might be too different. It's like you're two different people in one. You're the teacher personality and then you're just you at home or like with friends. But when you're in school and in the classroom you might be a totally different person. You can switch it on somehow and yeah, it's fun. So don't worry, it's just a lot. You just have to do it. I think and get over it. It's scary, intimidating, but it's something that you just have to get over with. I think, great. So then we're gonna look at these questions that I prepared that we commonly get that you might also have. So let me have some more tea here and then we're gonna jump into this. So good. Like I said, I missed the Oolong from Taiwan. So who was that in the beginning? Adam, I envy you. You can drink all of the delicious Taiwanese tea all the time. I still have some in my cabinet. Wherever I travel, I like to buy some tea. I bought some nice tea in Taiwan when I was there. So I still really, really like that. All right. Kristalines is working with second grade and third have been my favorite experience so far. Oh, yeah, that's a good age. That's a good age. They already know a little bit. They're not totally new to English. They already know a little bit. So it's not too hard. And they get very excited. They're usually very into it, aren't they? They're very easily excited. You play games with them and stuff. It's fun. So what is the difference between Tefal, Tissel and also Seltah? We get that question quite a lot. So let me break it down for you. Tefal stands for teaching English as a foreign language. And this is just a broad term encompassing diverse training programs and certifications for those planning to teach English abroad. So teaching English as a foreign language. Tefal, Tefal teaching, Tefal teacher, Tefal certification. This is a very common, broad umbrella term for all of these endeavors. Then with Tissel, which stands for teaching English to speakers of other languages. And this is a training program or certification for teaching English abroad, just like Tefal. So Tefal and Tissel essentially are the same exact thing. They are synonymous. The only difference is where the terms are used kind of in preferred. So in North America is Tissel, the term Tissel is more used and preferred in this region. And in the UK and kind of Europe, people just call it Tefal. So it's like tomato, tomato, basically. It's the same thing just pronounced differently if that makes any sense. So now Celta, Celta stands for certificate in English language teaching for adults or two adults, sorry. And this is a specialized form of Tefal certification granted by Cambridge English Language Assessment, which is part of the University of Cambridge in the UK. So this means Celta is just a distinct own brand. It's also a Tefal, it's under the Tefal category is just their own brand basically, okay? So their own Tefal brand from Cambridge University in the UK. So that's the difference. Oh, we have a cute comment here from Ty Tien An. Le Tham Phuk, I hope I'm saying the right, probably not, sorry. Many thanks for your great efforts. Thank you so much, I appreciate that. Thank you. So here you have it. I hope it's clearer now. That's why with the Celta, you can typically only get it from the University of Cambridge. It's always through them. And it's also typically more expensive than a regular Tefal course because of this brand, right? You pay more for a brand, a big brand. And this is a fancy university, so it costs a lot more money. Training and results, same, I would say. Similar, same, yeah. Tefal, T-Soul, Celta. So all related to the same thing, distinct differences. Hope that makes any, hope that makes sense. Just really quick. And then we have a next question. Do qualified teachers need a Tefal certification? Very commonly asked. We have some people, Crystal Leeds is, oh my gosh, I actually understood that. My lessons are paying off. Yay, okay, perfect. I'm glad. All right, so do qualified teachers need a Tefal certification? If somebody's a teacher like in their home country, you have a teaching license from your own country, so do you need to also have a Tefal or a T-Soul if you wanna go and teach English abroad? And sir, in many countries, Tefal and T-Soul is a requirement. So it's actually often, yeah, a requirement, part of the whole overseas teaching job requirements. Part of the visa process. So despite your qualifications differences, they still exist in teaching English abroad. And Tefal T-Soul is also very specific part of English teaching. So when you take a Tefal T-Soul course, you probably learn a lot of different things than just regular teaching because it goes into just other requirements or other fields, I should say. It tailors training to the international teaching environment versus a local teaching license you would know all about teaching in your country, right? So it acknowledges the challenges of teaching non-native English speakers. That's the big difference here. And so yeah, it might be, some parts are certainly similar. However, like I said, in many countries, it is a requirement. It's just a requirement from a school only, not always. So actually for in China, if you want to go teach English in China, it is a requirement for the whole visa. So you need to have at least a 120 hour Tefal course to teach English in China. You need to present that to the embassy. So it's not from the school, it's actually from the government. And some countries have this requirement, requirement from the whole government, not just the school, but you're also right where it is not a requirement from the government, a lot of schools will still require people to have a Teflora TESOL certification. And then yeah, even if it is not a requirement, it still enhances your employability. So it just adds value to a qualified teacher's credentials. It also opens doors to a wider range of international teaching opportunities and it demonstrates your commitment to professional development. So if you're already a teacher, adding a Teflora TESOL, first of all, we'll probably come very easy for you. And with an online course, it's not very expensive, but it has great value and it would just really round up your resume and portfolio. So I would definitely recommend it. And then this is the last one or the almost last question I think, do Tefal certificates expire? So now you're spending all this money and investing all your time. Do they ever expire? Do you need to renew them? Let's have a look. So no, once issued Teflora TESOL certificates are valid for life, they do not expire ever. So that's really great. Even if you maybe don't want to teach English right now, you're not ready yet, still you can take your course, have the certificate and then once the opportunity arises, you are ready and it doesn't expire. So don't worry about that. It's good for life. It's always good to kind of stay up to date on things and maybe when there's a new specialized Tefl course that comes out, you can take that on top of your existing course to kind of refresh your memory as well. So that's always a good idea, of course, lifelong learning, staying up to date on things, but in general, your certificate does not expire ever. Oh yes, and then also lastly, so where are Teflora TESOL teachers actually in demand? Where's the highest demand in the world? Which countries, which regions of the world are the best for teaching English abroad right now? So really highest demand is all over Asia. Asia has the highest demand for foreign English teachers in the world. We also see that a lot in the Middle East, Middle Eastern region, and then also Latin America and also in Europe. So that is not to say that Africa or North America doesn't have any English teaching positions. They're just not the top in terms of demand. It's harder to find something there, more challenging. Whereas in Asia, there's really more vacant position than teachers to fill them with. Countries like China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan. Did I say Thailand, Vietnam? Did I say that? Really anywhere in Asia is really good. Middle East as well, and they in the Middle East pay the highest Tefl salaries out of anywhere. Latin America is a high demand, but the salaries are not that great in the benefits and Europe also has a high demand, but typically the requirements are a lot stricter there. So you need to figure out where you wanna teach and then check out the requirements for this specific destination and then figure out if that fits your profile or what do you need in order to fit the profile or you might have to pick a different destination. So that's what it comes down to, if that makes any sense. And I believe that was it. So now we are in the Q&A and again, just wanna mention this 30% off discount code. You can scan the QR code right here and I'm also just gonna share with you the link one more time in the comments so you have it. And then I'm open to any questions. I did that again with opens in a new tab. I don't know why it copies like this. Ignore that. All right, this is it. Share it again, directly this time. So looks like this ends with FB Live minus Linda. Again, if you're listening to this on your podcast as a podcast episode, this link is in the description and then I'm opening up the stage for you guys. If there's anybody who has a question about anything I've talked about today or got something else related to Tefal TESOL teaching English abroad or online, let me know. I'm here, we still have a couple of minutes, maybe like four, five minutes of question answering and then it's almost time for my lunch. But I hope you guys enjoyed today's session. Hope you learned something new or maybe it helped you a little bit in figuring out which course is right for you. I hope that that's the case. And also while you're typing your questions, here's just kind of more info on how to reach ITTT. So like and follow always for more. We share a lot of content on our Facebook page, YouTube channel, socials. Obviously you will also get notified whenever we schedule a new live session and the website again is tefalcourse.net. And you can also email us, reach out to us, courses at tson-tefal.com with all your questions, feedback, concerns, all of that. Yeah, back, not from the beginning. And then I wanna go back to this. No, where is the Q and A slide? Here we go, here. Okay, this one. And then we're back, yeah, with the Q and A. Let me know if you have any questions. Yes, we really enjoyed today's information. Thank you. I hope it was helpful and maybe helped out with your decision-making. Thank you so much. I appreciate you guys, all your comments. Just being here, I know a lot of people stay on for the whole hour and I really appreciate that. Cause, you know, who has one hour of time? I'm just, I appreciate you sharing one hour of time of your day with me. That's just what I appreciate. So thank you so much. And let me know if there's any questions. We still have maybe two minutes, if there's a question coming through and if not, then that means I did a good job and answered all your questions. That's also good. Appreciate it. Let me know if you have any weekend plans. Here's Friday for me already, 11.30 a.m. So I'm already thinking about my weekend. And now actually in the beginning of this live session, remember I told you guys the weather was beautiful, the sun was out, the sky was blue, well now it's gray. So I think it might actually snow. If it snows, check out my Instagram story. I'll put it on if it really snows. You'll see. It might, it might not. It might actually just start snowing in the evening. So I don't know. We'll see. Kristaline says, I love your videos. Thank you so much for having them. Thank you. I appreciate it. Well, thank you for watching them, you know. Thank you. If nobody watched, I wouldn't do them. So it's all for you and because of you. And yeah, thanks to you. Yeah, you can always, I always say that too. If there's something you want to ask, but not in front of, you know, everybody live here, I understand you can reach out to me on Instagram, at Linda goes East, send me a DM, a message. Give me a follow too and some likes, I'd appreciate it. But yeah, you can just send me a DM as well. Yes, email me. Okay, perfect. You know what? Are you on Instagram too? Then you can just send me a DM as well. And then I'll give you my email address over there. We can figure that out. So yeah, just send me a DM at Linda goes East. If you're on Instagram, if not, let me know. And then we'll figure out something else, but yeah. Oh, that's a good question. Have you ever worked in Vietnam? Do enjoy your decent luncheon? I've never worked in Vietnam. No, I have been to Vietnam twice now for a trip because I love it. It's a beautiful place. I just love the culture, all the temples and everything is so beautiful. So I've been to Vietnam. I love it there. I want to go back. It's one of the places really I want to go back all the time and see more, but I haven't worked there.  Enjoy the beaches and the towns and stuff. Oh, is this here? We really need native speakers. Like you will see, there you go. Anybody here, contact Tai Tiang An, I'm saying the right for positions. Are you, do you work at a school? Are you like a recruiter? Maybe there's a connection. Maybe they can hook you up if you want to work in Vietnam. Contact our friend here. They need native speakers. Perfect. English is considered the second language. Yeah, totally, absolutely. No, I loved Vietnam. Every time I visited, so I would love to, I actually know somebody who lives in Vietnam, friend of mine and she loves it, they're enjoying it. It's a beautiful place, so I would be down, definitely. Make me an offer, make me an offer. Make me an offer I can't refuse and then I'll move down there, absolutely. Amitabha says, thanks a lot, Linda, for your kind comments, suggestions and words at all times to come. I sincerely hope that you have a nice weekend and take care both in the singular and plural forms. I see what you mean. Thanks, thank you. Appreciate you Amitabha, thank you so much. All right, Kristaline has Instagram, so just send me a DM. And then I'll wait for you and then we can do it. We can figure everything out. All right, cool, this is very interesting. Also about Vietnam, learned some new things that was cool. So I think we're gonna end it here if there's no more questions coming through. This was really fun. Thank you so much for all your comments and we made some new friends here, that was fun. So thank you all and I am always welcome. Yeah, people in Vietnam are always very, very nice, very nice, always had a great experience. So can't wait to go back. I really wanna go to, I don't live in Seoul, so I live in a smaller city and we do have a small airport and they fly to, I think now to three places in Vietnam. So one, they fly, I think to Hanoi. They fly to Da Nang, so that's where we always go. We kinda like the central area, so like, I really like Hoi An, Da Nang, Binh To Hue. I like that area. And I think now they also fly to Nha Trang, if that's what it's, is that the name, Nha Trang? So I really wanna go there and check that out. Maybe, maybe soon, we'll see. Anyway, we're rambling. So yeah, thank you so much and I hope to see you all again next time. Keep an eye out on our Facebook page when the next live session will be so that you're updated and you can join us and Nha Trang is also a beach. Okay, well that's good to know, I like the beaches. I'm gonna do some research and then plan my trip to Nha Trang. All right, thank you guys so much. We're gonna end it here and I hope to see you all again next time. And yeah, if you feel like it, reach out to me on Instagram. Give me a like and a follow, I'd appreciate that and I'll see you all again next time. Thank you guys so much, bye.