He's taking the " learning by doing" approach.
An excellent start.
For me, the "gap" was a very long one.
Since school actually.
If the language teachers had shown any hint of enthusiasm, it might have gone better. But they didn't. By the end of the very first French lesson I was totally pissed off with the whole thing. And it didn't get any better.
And this was important .... at that time, if you didn't have an O level in a modern foreign language, there were only 2 ( two!!) universities that would take you. Eek ! So I didn't have much choice. To this day, O level French is the only exam I have ever failed. And it wasn't my fault. It was them.
Boring bastards !
On a broader level, all the " humanities" were taught very badly and boringly. They weren't interested or interesting. They didn't even bother to hide it from us ! And they didn't care if we passed or failed.
Whereas the Science/Maths lot were excellent, enthusiastic teachers.
Anyway .... much much later in life I decided I could do better.
Better than they could manage anyway.
And I have.
So this video about "learning French again" is a good idea.
One thing that has changed immensely between then and now is the sheer variety and number of resources for language learning.
And the easy (and cheap) availability of French books and CDs on sites like Amazon. ( or German, or Spanish, or Welsh for that matter).
When I was in my teens there was very little access to either.
And what there was was pretty crap. boring, old-fashioned and rubbish.
And there was certainly nothing like this ......