I've noticed this a lot with Japanese learners... I even noticed this recently in a kanji practice book for Japanese second graders (it had furigana [hiragana] next to the katakana to make it legible for kids).
I learned katakana before I learned hiragana and never had a problem with this... I actually think katakana is funner to learn as a beginner because you can find words that are
loan words from English and get kind of instant gratification. Unfortunately a lot of those words have kind of a "
false friend" aspect to them.