Transferring patterns only really works when the language you’re learning is similar to ones you already know. I’m learning Chinese, and to my Western mind it feels like an alien language.
For sure, some common ground is needed. Madrigal's is a famous example of LT that almost exclusively focuses on transfer itself, because English and Spanish are reasonably similar.
LT's method goes a bit further though, hence why there are courses on Arabic, Swahili and (upcoming) Japanese. Chinese might be even further removed, but the LT courses are about learning to _think_ about how the language works, and the format of the course (teacher + median student + you) goes a long way to encourage this. Beyond Madrigal's "look how similar these words are".
