As a Dutchie when I tried to learn Italian I just did it mostly. I did it exxagerated and in stereotypical fashion because I found it fun. Doing it in exxagerated manner also gave me the feeling I could have fun with the language, was allowed to fail and had an understanding where the exxageration came from and soon got to understand how to do it in a more normal fashion.
This approach worked so well that my teacher at one point said to a couple of Russians in class "just pronounce it like Mettamage." They were dumbfounded, "really? Do we have to? It is so over the top." They did it anyway, their Italian accents improved immediately. Before they were really monotone and had a heavy voice, and now their tone was all over the place and their voice was less heavy.
Dutch and Italian are closer in pronounciation than I initially thought. So you have a point. But not quite:
The point of this whole post is this: when I got back home to The Netherlands, I wanted to continue my studies. I suddenly lost interest in Italian. I realized that learning Italian words on paper is not the same thing as learning Italian words in Rome. The biggest reason: when I learned Italian words in Rome I saw people speak. Not only did I learn a word, I apparently remember how their lips moved to such an extent that the movement was encoded in my lips. This didn't happen straight away but if you forget a particular word a couple of times and you see the word being said all the time, you start to remember how people say the word with their lips. I could clearly remember a distinct feeling of not feeling any muscle memory in my newly learned Italian words that I learned in The Netherlands.