How is pronunciation discussed in Chinese?
Nowadays schoolchildren are taught Pinyin pretty thoroughly first, so they know how to correctly pronounce Pinyin. Then when learning new words, all they have to do is learn the Pinyin. A lot of primary/elementary textbooks will have annotations like this:



Here's a typical Chinese primary school blackboard:



Here's a Taiwanese equivalent of this sort of annotation, usually used on difficult characters:



While we're at it, here's a Japanese equivalent: