This
study aims to describe the factors of the difficulty of learning katakana and
what efforts are made by students to overcome the difficulties
of learning katakana during the implementation of distance learning
(PJJ) in one of the MA in Sidoarjo. Respondents in this study
were students of class X, amounting to 36 people
and 8 respondents who were
used as resource persons in interviews. The
approach used is a mixed methods. The data collection
technique used is by distributing questionnaires and conducting interviews. The results of this study are students have difficulty learning katakana
letters caused by several factors including intrinsic factors and extrinsic factors. The following are included in the
intrinsic factors, as follows: 1) students misunderstanding of the katakana letter material, 2) students often make mistakes
in writing the sequence of katakana letters, 3
) Students cannot distinguish
similar katakana letters, 4) Students do not know the difference between
katakana letters and other Japanese letters, 5) Students cannot memorize all katakana
letters, 6) Students cannot write katakana
letters in order, 7) Students do not often practice writing
katakana letters, 8) the number of katakana letters is too much, and 9) students feel they understand other Japanese language
material better than katakana material.
Meanwhile, the extrinsic
factors include: 1) Learning media tends to be the same, 2) Katakana
letters do not often/rarely appear in Japanese
lessons, and 3) Lack of teacher explanations. In addition, to overcome
difficulties, students make several efforts as
follows: 1) Paying
attention and listening to the teacher's explanation, 2) Repeating material
that is not understood, 3) Actively asking questions, 4) Looking for additional material, 5) Often practicing writing, 6) Choose and create
interesting media, and 7) Study with friends.
Keywords: Difficulty factor, learning,
katakana, distance learning (PJJ)