As mentioned by Elaine, Chinese has two parts pin yin and Characters. As for Pin Yin, it is very important, you need to learn it first and you need to learn the four tones and neutral tone. It is the key step to pronounce Chinese well. After you learn Pin Yin, you can choose to learn Character or not, if you just want to learn the conversation to speak, there is no need to learn Characters because the Character is for the ones who want to write. If you know Pin Yin you can read all of the Chinese words and sentences. Hope this can help you.