From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality.
IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique are going to serve you well.
Focus on shortening the tones you sound (while staying accurate) and focus on combining tones.
Thankfully there are only 4 tones so only 16 unique combinations of two tones (actually only 15 because 3->3 isn't really used)
And only 64 combinations of 3 tones
If you master those combinations in terms of speed and accuracy (both speaking and listening) the rest of it can be composed.
Then begins the long path to memorizing every phoneme+tone -> character pairing :)
IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique are going to serve you well.
Focus on shortening the tones you sound (while staying accurate) and focus on combining tones.
Thankfully there are only 4 tones so only 16 unique combinations of two tones (actually only 15 because 3->3 isn't really used) And only 64 combinations of 3 tones
If you master those combinations in terms of speed and accuracy (both speaking and listening) the rest of it can be composed.
Then begins the long path to memorizing every phoneme+tone -> character pairing :)