This is totally possible! I've been learning both Mandarin and Cantonese, and to be honest, if your goal is conversation, best to just focus on speaking to begin with. I did, and I honestly felt that starting out with pinyin helped me to be more aware of the tones for new vocab. (And once you start learning characters, I'd still be mindful of the pinyin for this reason!) I do feel that learning Chinese characters becomes a lot more necessary once you start approaching an intermediate level though. Learning characters can help make the meaning of new vocabulary clearer, gives you more avenues to learn vocab within an authentic setting, and just makes learning via flashcards about ten times easier. When you do feel like you want to learn characters, I'd use the app Noodle, which is free on iOS, and more or less just as good as Skritter.

After mastering pinyin，you gradually to learn some high frequency Chinese characters will be useful . Because Chinese characters are very interesting and help you improve your oral speaking.

Xièxie , Sawggga and Echo.

Kendall 是对的。提醒一下，汉语存在同发音不同意义的情况，前期用拼音会很困惑，但是后面你会觉得很好笑。

use picture, like draw? ues some simple English words and speak slowly,your student is in college，high shchool or primary？ i am poor in English but i can approximately understand what your means。