beccastareyes

I think I figured out why I'm having more trouble with katakana than I did with hiragana.

Well, I use hiragana. A lot. I'm a showboater who likes to do her work in hiragana even if the teacher says we can use romanji. Most thigns I have to read or write will be in hiragana, as are most of the things Ogawa-sensei write on the board.
Our book doens't technically start katakana until the end of chapter 3 and before chapter 4. Until then, all foreign words have little hiragana written above them (I forget what that's called, but I've seen it in actual Japanese for kanji). Since I know hiragana now, it's easier for me to read the hiragana than look at the katakana.
/shi/ and /tsu/ look a lot alike to me. So do /so/ and /n/ -- but I'm helped in that both appear in my last name.