There is an anime about Persona 4 right now.  It's basically a mirror of the game, and it'll show you how the game is supposed to be played out (in a sense).

It won't spoil anything for you, and since the story's pretty much the same, you can just watch and play at different times.

There isn't a one way to counter that.  You have to see who's in the team and respond accordingly.

I was with you too, and got one-shotted a lot there.  But I managed to survive because my Personas were a high level.

Use your items, like Physical/Magic Mirrors and/or increase your hit/evasion.  If nothing else, Guard, but always make sure you have high health.

If you have Yosuke, Chie, and Yukiko as teammates, then Yukiko will most likely bombard you with her Fire Skills.  Same with Yosuke, but only Wind.  It seems to me that getting a Persona that Nulls Fire, Wind, and Physical will solve your problems.

Remember you can use more than one Persona per fight.

I saw this quite late, I'm sorry!  I didn't check the forums much due to not much posts here.

But I hope that helped!