A friend of mine said to me that MSFS helped him with talking to ATC. The built in ATC isnt very good but if you take the game online (
www.vatsim.net) you will find it gets a little more realistic now your talking to real people in the ATC tower and with "real time/live update" weather. For hand flying the aircraft i doubt it would be of much help, however, like BMI701EGCC posted, if you bought some of those add-ons it would build on the realism a little again, the Level-D 767 and other aircraft add-ons has more advanced systems than the standard that come with MSFS so it might help you know your way around the cockpit and how some of the things work before you did a type rate.