Learning Italian at home, listening to audio lessons on the way to the office using the CD player in the car or reading a book all about Italian are different examples of how one person can learn another language without getting formal lessons from any teacher or language professor.
If you are an interested learner, disregard your age or status in life; if you want to learn something out of pure interest and curiosity, you will reap your own rewards in the end. Also, it doesnt matter if you have the most expensive language learning software or if you just read on available online resources and old books from the library, the important thing is that you keep on learning no matter what it takes.
The Italian language has a different accent compared to the English language, the Italian accent needed to be followed is also different, but the easy fact about the Italian language is the way each word is pronounce because it only follows the syllables and the way how each word is spelled. What else can help your progress in learning? To apply what you learn and what you are learning in the process in the most natural way possible is the answer.
Dont expect to speak...