Before I jump into the question, a bit of context for my situation:
I'm in Mandarin 1 currently in HS, about 7 months in from the beginning of the school year, and I'm having some problems. According to my Mandarin teacher, I seem to be ahead of my class, as my vocabulary and grammar is a bit more complex (since I study a bit outside of class).
Though, while I can learn characters and definitions pretty well, I'm having a lot of trouble with my listening and speaking. I feel as if my tones aren't too differentiable, and I feel like I don't really keep track of tone usage when I try to speak. When I listened to my Mandarin teacher speaking a bit more quickly, even though it was a sentence I would've understood if it was slowed down a bit, I only picked up a few words, and I had a lot more trouble trying to differentiate the tones while listening to her speak.
Does anyone have any recommendations on how I can try to improve both speaking and listening? Thank you so much! :)