Many foreign friends are learning Chinese now, you may begin with some simple words, and use "Pinyin" to start which can help you with the pronunciation.

pin yin is very important in chinese.If you good at pin yin, you can speak all Chinese vocablary

start from pin yin

Startting with pinyin is good way to correct your pronunciation.then you can try to learn and write some simple charactors ,like "一；yi" \ "二；er" \ "人；ren" \ "口；kou" ect. you can read some simple essay when you have learnt a few words. watching some Chinese program is good way to train the sense of language. good luck friend:D

surely, you should learn pingyin first, just like we learn english begin with abc(^.^)~~~jiayou~~fighting!