[Azrael]

I have to say, I halfway disagree with Chasm. It completely depends on if YOU want to focus on speaking first or if you want to get down to business and get the writing out of the way as well. To be honest, if you're good at memorization, writing is not that hard (not counting Kanji, of course). Most courses urge you to learn Hiragana/Katakana right off because they are the basics. The ABC's sort of. If you have patience, it does NOT set you up for failure.

You're going to have to learn them eventually. I, personally, would rather know how to write/read/speak/listen all at once then to just speak/listen and then try to get in the written in there as well. Written, to me, also helps with speaking because of the double sounds are shown in written but sometimes rather difficult to tell in speaking. You'll probably have to go back and pretty much re-learn half the word you already know. Except how to write it instead of it's meaning/sound. I, personally, would find that even more frustrating. >3<

Not to mention, -again at least for me- I remember how a word looks if I can't remember what it actually is. With it written in kana, I can usually remember how it looked and break it down and get it that way.

Just some thoughts while I've been learning it. >3<'