You are making a lot of assumptions here about how people learn. When I started learning, pinyin foundation was the absolute first thing. Before anything else.

You are making a lot of assumptions here about how people learn. When I started learning, pinyin foundation was the absolute first thing. Before anything else. Yes, I was told /d/ is an unaspirated /t/, but I also read it in my text book. Also, you say people will never tell me I am wrong. I disagree here. People correct my tones all the time. They know I am learning. Even people I try and talk to at a supermarket are pleasantly surprised I talked to them in their language and they offer a correction. Also, you keep saying zhuyin is better, but you haven't given a single example as to why. You just keep saying pinyin isn't as good enough and gives false hope. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but you made an incomplete argument saying the method I am learning is damaging to my learning and all you state is not knowing the proper pronunciation of characters by simply looking at them. You learn a language, with its "rules".