Benny's American accent in Chinese is thick (the tones are often wrong on individual words), and his speech is halting, but even with the mistakes in grammar and vocabulary choice, I can understand him. (I am an American native speaker of English who has been learning Chinese as a second language since I was a teenager in the 1970s. My HN user profile discloses other languages I have studied over the years.) So, yeah, I guess he's doing not half badly. You won't fail to notice that Benny speaks MUCH more slowly than the native speaker of Chinese he "interviews," and after the prepared remarks he uses to open up the interview, and a few personal stories about himself, he hardly interacts with the native speaker of Chinese except to say "uh-huh." (You will also not fail to notice that the Chinese woman he is interviewing knows English, and presumably has spoken Chinese to other Americans with thick accents before.)

I think the rule of language learning in the blog post that has the most plausibility is "#8 – Embrace mistakes." (The interview subject basically says this to Benny in the interview, that he has a good habit of immediately using the language he learns, which he learns to use, and uses bravely.) I know an American man whose first visit to east Asia was simply to use up a one-way portion of an airplane ticket a friend gave him. He arrived in Taiwan in 1982 not knowing a word of Chinese, and having a thick south Boston (specifically Quincy, I think) accent that made his English sound strange to most Americans who met him. But he was very bold in striking up conversations with local people in Taiwan, and practiced his Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) relentlessly, so he gradually outpaced a lot of more shy Americans in his actual communication proficiency. He eventually found work in a high-tech company operated mostly by Hong Kong Chinese people, and has had a very satisfying career working both in east Asia and on the west coast of the United States. I was DELIGHTED to remake acquaintance with him by LinkedIn a few years ago and to endorse his language ability. He earned it.

Of course Benny is promoting his new book, and here is a link to some press coverage generated by his publicity efforts:

http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/13/benny-lewis-the-man-who-says-y...

Perhaps the statement in the article, "Lewis says: ‘The problem here, though, is that if you have such high criteria for fluency, then I have to confess, I’m not even fluent in English, my native language’" helps put his claims in context.