There's a lot of good info in the video. And I recommend people to watch it fully, before taking conclusions about the content.
A few highlights:
- Speaking practice actually helps a fair bit. At the least with phonetics (training muscle memory) and grammar (you catch patterns you otherwise wouldn't).
- The three factors he mentions near the end (motivation, self-esteem, anxiety) are what a lot of teachers and professors do wrong - because they make you feel like you're in some group therapy.
- Even if you don't understand what is said, focus on the situation. He shows this rather well with the Spock example. (i.e. since context dictates the meaning of the text, even if you don't get the text you can still retrieve info from the context.)