Tonight I’m home alone. I’ll see what I can do.
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English is written a fair bit like how it’s pronounced: quite similar to Dutch. 
On learning how to read, English is slightly harder than Italian. That’s a combination of the language simultaneously being spelled more etymologically and having changed more in the past millennium. But it’s still fundamentally an alphabet-based language. It’s nothing like the thousands of characters you need for even a semblance of basic understanding of written Chinese.
For learning how to read and write, a common American method is to slightly simplify spelling in the beginning to teach the correspondence between letters and sounds: Phonics - Wikipedia
http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/reading-language/reading-tips/phonics-basics/
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Still it baffles me how the same word can be pronounced differently according to the meaning. I’m looking at you, “read”.
I mean, we also have cases like subito or ancora or principi that change stress to mean different things (sùbito = right now, subìto = suffered; àncora = anchor, ancòra = again; prìncipi = princes, princìpi = principles), but they’re a handful.
And we have cases where the two different E change the meaning, most notably pesca: pésca = fishing, pèsca = peach. But it’s still an E sound, and if you say pésca meaning the fruit, most of the Italians wouldn’t notice you used the wrong word.
By the way, this double E is a big problem when Italians are speaking German, as they refer to two different letters: E and Ä.
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It could be to avoid another type of ambiguity (with the color). You don’t have that in lead/led, meet/met, bleed/bled etc. Iirc that’s why there’s flour and flower.
Think of a car purrrrrrrrrring.
Word by word. A friend of mine has relatives in England and the kids are learning the pronunciation with small cards. On each card is a picture with the word.
Have you prepared the traps already? 
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I, for example, live in a region of Italy where “fishing” or “peach” uses the same word with the same stress on “e”: pèsca.
Depending on the context, I can deduce the correct meaning.
I know another word where depending on the stress, it can have 3 different meanings: capitano.
“Il capitàno capitanò la compagnia. Sono cose che càpitano.”
(The Captain captained the team. These things happen)
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I can think of it, I just can’t replicate it.
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Can you gargle/burble?
But for “capitanò” you have to explicitly add the accent sign 
Well, I come from Sardinia, where the é doesn’t exist. In fact, when learning German, most of my classmates interpreted the closed e sound as an I. So a name like “Peter” was written down as “Piter” when doing listening exercises.
I think we had to say “Peter kommt später” hundreds of times to get used to the difference
Or… U and Ü. That was a real killer for some people. My wife still has problems in saying fünfundfünfzig.
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That is even valid for some Germans…
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To train the rolled R you have to slowly start saying a short b sound and a short d sound (one syllable each) and somehow merge them together while getting faster.
I cannot explain it better without demonstrating it, but it is a professional practice in fact.
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I’m not sure 
I can make a kind of rolled sound at the back, for the French word quatre. But I have to concentrate to do it. And I think it’s in the wrong place for an Italian R.
I have a friend who speaks good German, but he insists on making a French-sounding R sound instead of a German-sounding one.
I solved the problem in speaking with a Swiss accent. The Swiss roll or tap their R’s, so I’m fine with it 
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Okaaaaay…
It´s just to see where you tongue has to be in order to make that sound. I know it sounds weird but it is a professional training. My mother used to do that for a living.
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It’s basically a d held in place while you push air past when you think about it.
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There are several videos on YouTube teaching the rolling “R”. After a first quick search I’ve found these two videos in English. They explain what is happening in the mouth:
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Thanks, these might help me make sense of it better
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Gargling is for a french throat-R.
Don’t listen to Milan either. If you put a B in there, your lips will be closed, which is not what you want.
If you want to learn the real rolling R (the one you can do for 20 seconds on end), you need to loosen the tip of your tongue.
Pick one word like “drum”.
Start slowly by alternating “de” and “dum”.
Note the E must be the short, muted, as in in “the” (IPA mirrored upside down e)
Then say both words/sounds joined together:“dedum dedum…” Watch that tongue. It’s tip should start against the back of your upper front teeth (for the D), drop down and come back (for the second D).
Repeat, faster and faster.
Practice 5 minutes every morning/ evening and you’ll be drum rolling in no time!
In the worst case you’ll look like this guy
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I tried, I ended up saying “dürüm, dürüm”. Now I want a kebab.
But if it sounds like this you might have gone too far.
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