I myself disagree with Jeff, but that is not to say that his suggestions are bad. Every learner is different. 1) Pinyin, while is not perfect, is very very useful. Pinyin is very easy to learn, but it has some idiosyncrasies. The student needs to understand that Pinyin is not pronounced the way English is, and what sounds Pinyin actually represents. The student also needs to be aware that Pinyin is not used to talk to people, it is only used as an input system, it is absolutely not a replacement for Chinese characters. I agree with Jeff that Wade Giles is a little better, but it seems the World has settled on Pinyin now. I think 是 is better written as shr as it is in Wade Giles, not "shi" as it is in Pinyin, as a lot of students think this says "shee". 天 is pronounced more like "tien", 言 is pronounced more like "yen", 聲 is pronounced more like "shung". Pinyin is not perfect, but it is very useful. Just make sure the student knows this. 2) This can be useful, but the student needs to do a lot of reading and listening on their own to expand their vocabulary. 3) Honestly, this is kind of pointless. Student should simply rote memorise the first 1000 characters to get familiar with characters before they start analysing them, this way they will be learning something they are already familiar with, which means they will understand it better and be more curious, as they have come across these things before. Oh, and I should add: Learning Chinese characters is not difficult. The only problem with characters is that there is a lot of them. Students should spend at least an hour a day for at least a year memorising them by rote. Once you have about 1000, you will be able to read basic material. Texting your friends is a great way to learn to read, as your friends use the characters, words and idioms your friends use are the ones you need to learn. Chinese is pronunciation is hard, but not impossible. Students should practice the tones regularly.

Pinyin and pronunciation is a good place to start. Be careful that, when you teach pronunciation, you teach tongue position. When I started learning people would say things like "the Chinese r, as represented by pinyin, is the same sound as the S in te word pleasure", which is not true. Do some research in Chinese phonetics if necessary, but seriously, don't say "this Chinese is just like this English sound" unless it actually is. With characters, you probably want to start with common radicals and then common characters. I wouldn't start worrying about characters until he's got some basic conversation down, though.

My experience in learning Chinese as according to your teaching concerns... 1. Learning Pinyin is useless as you make especially and English learner learn how to pronounce the letters differently than in English. Wade-Giles system is slightly better but not perfect. I would scrap this and let the student come up with how he would "spell" to help the pronunciation. 2. This is a good basic way to introduce the student to the language. Most Westerners cannot distinguish the four tones and have a most difficult time in uttering them unless they have a good musical ear. 3. Memorization of characters is just a convenience for the teacher. How many English words you learnt and forget after two days of not using them constantly? Same with Chinese. Since Chinese characters have meaning you should teach them the meaning and this helps the student to remember as mnemonics. At the same time, you teach the student the Chinese culture, philosohy and traditions. For example, 如 = if, is composed of a woman + a mouth because in traditional Chinese society, women are not taken seriously hence their words are of no consequence. 好 a woman given a birth to a son = good. 媚 = sexy as women's eye brows are considered sexy. 每 = every because in order for a man to exist, he must have a mother to begin with. 海 as every sea must have water. 漠 = no water i.e. desert. 明 = bright since the only major sources of light in the old days are from the sun and moon. This way of learning is good for the student but the teacher has to be more knowledgeable.

I am an English teacher and a Chinese student so maybe I can provide a little bit of insight to your question. The best way to start is explain the difference between Pinyin and the characters. After that, teach basic conversation phrases. Work on their pronunciation. Once they progress, start teaching him like you would teach a child all the characters and how to add them to make one character set. I hope this is helpful!