I've been learning Chinese for the past three years here, and I can definitely see how it very much differs structurally in the way he describes. It's not that English doesn't have these turns of phrase or that you can't say things in a direct way in Chinese. It's about the way you phrase things as a default. Every language I've learned had structural differences and affects the way I think when I use it. That's the most interesting part about learning languages I find.