I would recommend him as a beginner ,if he was wanting to deposit.Deposit into a subscription poker site such as NLOP or Pureplay. He will pay$20 a month to play all the real money scheduled monthly tourneys.Paying out any where from $25 to $1,000 or even win WSOP seats.
I think this is a very good option, especially for honing your tournament skills. As the cash games on these sites are for play money, I don't think they're very likely to give a true representation of what real money cash games are like. But then again, even in real money cash games, there is a huge difference in the kind of play you can expect in a $5NL game compared to $500NL.
When it comes to tournaments, there are certain things that I find to be true whether you are playing on a membership site or a real money poker site or whether you're playing a buy-in tournament on a free roll. Some people are going to be willing to donk off there chips utilizing a play bad/get lucky style of play. Others are going to take the game more seriously, as good players are always going to try to avoid playing bad, and hate losing just as much as they enjoy winning.
These are the players that will give you a taste of what it's like to compete with strong poker players. There are plenty of them to be found on the membership sites. When you find yourself making deep runs against them and battling it out for a seat at the final table on regular basis, you will be ready for tournament play on any real money site.