In what order should I learn/study Italian?

Italian is, by most measures together with Sardinian, the closest language to Latin, from which it descends via Vulgar Latin. Italian is the national, or de facto national, official language in Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), San Marino, and Vatican City. It has official minority status in western Istria (Croatia and Slovenia). Italian, Italiano or lingua Italiana is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. It is the second most widely spoken native language in the European Union with approximately 85 million speakers in total. Italian is a major European language. It is one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe. It is also widely spoken in Luxemburg, Germany, and Belgium, United States, Canada, Venezuela, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina; and used to be an official language once upon a time in Albania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro (Kotor), Greece (the Ionian Islands and the Dodecanese) and in the former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa, where it still plays a significant role in various sectors. Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and opera. Its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the food and luxury goods markets.

1. In my opinion, I suggest you start by actively listening to, as many relevant audio resources you find – online, in libraries, repeatedly until the pronunciation, the accent, the pitch, the tone and the speed gets embedded in your subconscious. This will help you train your ear, identify spoken words and get you ‘in tune’ with the speech. After multiple listening episodes, take the transcript of the audio clip and read along maintaining the same pronunciation, accent, pitch, tone and speed. You could listen to Podcasts, News, Audiobooks, Italian songs, Talk Shows, Documentaries and much more!
2. With this in process, the second thing learners must learn of a language automatically becomes Speaking; Shadow what you have been hearing all along in the audio clips now with the transcript. Speak as though you delivered the original dialogues. loud and clear.  
3. Practice writing the Italian alphabet. They are fairly easy and a lot encouraging once you get the hang of it! Start by learning the vowels and consonants present in the language, moving over to two-letter and three-letter words. Spend considerable time mastering it before moving on to our last stop!
4. Read what you are writing in the Italian script after regular intervals to memorize the Italian alphabets and get a grasp on the pronunciation, the accent, the pitch, the tone and the speed. Read children’s storybooks without feeling awkward. Try reading words off an Italian magazine or newspaper and keep finding new articles to read each day from a list of topics you would like to read – food/travel blog, politics/history, etcetera.
5. Lastly, focus on Grammar. Italian has a shallow orthography, meaning very regular spelling with an almost one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. In linguistic terms, the writing system is close to being a phonemic orthography. Italian grammar is Latin-based and, therefore, shares most of its basic features with other Romance languages such as French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Learn suffix and prefix systems, capitalization rules, articles, propositions, pronouns, verbs, verb conjugations, sound system usage. 

Remember learning Italian gives you potential access to over 63 million people in the world speaks Italian as their first language, along with an additional 3 million who speak Italian as a second language. Various sources differ slightly, but Italian is around the 20th most spoken language in the world. Italian culture is steeped in the arts, family, architecture, music and food. Home of the Roman Empire and a major centre of the Renaissance, culture on the Italian peninsula has flourished for centuries. 

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