Duolingo is a free language-learning website and crowdsourced text translation platform which purports to offer "Free language education for the world", and which is very popular with year abroad students. Ellie Cobbe spent her year abroad in Paris and Valencia, and went to Madrid as a Language Assistant after graduation. She blogged about the new Duolingo wesite on her blog, and here's her review for TYA...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a stop motion video of your Year Abroad may just err on the edge of doing this incredible experience a drop of justice. They’re even simpler to make than you might think if you follow these 5 easy steps.

1. Plan your stop motion before you start shooting. Decide if you want a theme, a route or just to showcase your city to the maximum. I chose a route for Paris because it seemed a fitting way to end my semester of exploring the city on foot with my camera and my friend Dan. For Valencia I just wanted to show off the sights and the laid back lifestyle; for Barcelona (see below) I focused on the theme of walking and exploring a city that wasn’t our home: