It depends what your goals are. If it's just to pick up a couple of phrases, then probably not. But anything else, you should learn characters as that's the written language. Pinyin is just a tool to help the pronunciation. I might also add that pronunciation of the Chinese pinyin and the roman alphabet in English are different so make sure you have a teacher/sound recordings of proper pronunciation (I notice in Chinese learners, many of them were not taught the correct Chinese pronunciation). Characters are used to distinguish meanings since Chinese has a lot of homophones. Hope this helps.

Check out www.zhongwen.com

I also recommend www.hackingchinese.com and also www.chinesehacks.com

What really helped is downloading and using the Firefox plug-in Perapera Chinese when I browse websites. I will browse Wikipedia articles of interest in Chinese using the plug-in and I learn enormous amounts of vocab whereas before there was an impenetrable wall of Chinese.

I learn songs as well - they help with character recognition and new vocab.

I'm not at the stage where I can read a newspaper but I have to learn more characters so I'm choosing to use Heisig's book "Remembering the Hanzi".

Check out your local library. There are a ton of Chinese books at my local public library, some annotated with zhuyin, some just characters that can be a good resource.

Also, highly recommend DLI's GLOSS: https://gloss.dliflc.edu/

The near-native speakers I've met who are very high level and pass as native speakers spent a lot of time watching movies, TV shows, etc but they also have a good grasp on grammar through their schooling. On the other end, I've seen many students who have learned English 10+ years in China who simply could not be understood. No matter how hard they tried, I could not understand them and their classmates who were from different provinces could not understand their English either. Likewise, I've seen Americans learning Chinese who were very difficult to understand and most Americans learning Chinese have trouble consistently nailing the tones which makes it very difficult for native speakers to understand. I don't think a non-native speaker would have helped in this situation. I think the problem in both of these cases is that the students are not getting enough exposure to native content outside the classroom through TV, movies, etc and that's one aspect that's very important to developing a "feel" for the language so you don't have to constantly translate in your head.

So, anyone try a two-pronged approach?

I hope I can contribute a unique perspective to this discussion. I think it's best to have a combined approach to learning.

For speaking/listening, I say it's always best to get exposure through native speakers, whether they are "live" people you are speaking to, or through movies, TV, etc. Non-natives may be better versed in the grammar, etc. but you can just pick up a grammar book and not necessarily need to talk to anyone to learn it. There's a ton of free resources online for questions. Native speaker teachers should be able to give you explanations as well.

As for Chinese, I would avoid learning with a non-native speaker for speaking/listening because it's very hard to get a "feel" for the language without speaking with a native speaker and to get the correct tones. The tones are very important in Chinese language and I think it's better to get it right the first time than go back and correct it. It will only make it difficult later on. Plus, Chinese culture is a very important aspect tied to the language and a native speaker brings a lot of richness and knowledge that a non-native simply cannot do without having lived in the country for decades. However, I also feel it's good to also check out some of the resources by non-native speakers regarding characters.

Well, I assume you are referring to Mandarin Chinese -

Written: There's two sets of written Chinese currently in use: simplified and traditional. You can't necessarily know the exact pronunciation of a word like you do in English if you haven't seen it before.

Spoken: Chinese has 4 tones (5 with neutral tone) as it's a tonal language. You don't indicate the tones in the hanzi, just the pinyin (which aides in pronunciation).

I hope this answers your question.

I've seen keyboards with 注音符号 zhuyin on it but you will probably only find those in Taiwan.

This sounds quite interesting! Is this an accountability group for Chinese learners? I am a native English speaker learning Chinese.