If a student could recognise when he is ON Track, he probably wouldn't get off it in the first place. Now if he can't recognise the ON Track case how does he recognise the OFF Track case? and measure how far it is from something he couldn't identify in the first place. Turning right or left 40 degrees in the vain hope of regaining this unrecognisable Track in X minutes is expecting rather a lot of some students who will merily go off to practice their lost procedure in the opposite direction. I don't recall anything that requires a PPL student to fly a Track, FCL 684 certainly doesn't.