Began my practice of the 3rd tone with some of these drills: https://youtu.be/xw6YDLlWBMY?list=PLFkP3w7MB-Po_lz-5tp3kiWJadiTVNTnV. Wasn't happy with how these videos demonstrate the 3rd tone as a final though, think it's too hooky.

I then reviewed the 3rd tone word lists my native speaker friends recorded for me. First, mimicking, then recording myself and comparing the recording. I also identified that when 3rd tones are mixed up in various pairs, I have a lot of trouble distinguishing the 3rd final and the 4th final, particularly after 1st and 2nd tones. I have realised this is because chinese speakers will dip into the third low tone from the high ending of the third and second tone. I think the difference I have found to help me distinguish these finals is the 4th starts much higher. Even though the 3rd starts slightly higher than it finishes, it starts from a much lower place.

Hmm. Tomorrow I think I will try to solidify what I have learnt here, then maybe begin to tackle a few sentences and maybe the 3rd tone change rule :)

Todays log: I didn't have much time today to devote to fixing my third tone. While walking to the doctor's I practiced mimicking the recordings of the 3rd tone words I made my housemates make for me for a little bit. Tomorrow I will do it again, and try to retest my listening and speaking with third tone initials and finals.

Challenge strategy (since I haven't written it out yet):

For context, I was learning Chinese casually (2hrs per week casual/hobby night class, barely any study) for two years and only got to around the HSK2 (old) level, with extremely limited speaking experience. I am now in Taiwan, 1.5 months into a 6 month intensive study period where I am studying 15 hours a week at a university.

Coming to Taiwan, beyond my other deficiencies in speaking more generally such as speed and grammar-on-the-fly, I have noticed pretty major problems with my pronunciation. This has led to many people misunderstanding me, even when I think I am saying the right words. Correcting (or at least beginning to correct) these problems is my main motivation for the challenge and will be my goal for the month.

Goals
1. Correct my 3rd tone. I currently hear and speak the 3rd tone as the exaggerated hook tone that I was originally taught. I need to change this to sound more natural, and also make speaking easier for me (trying to pronounce the incorrect hook tone is actually harder, especially in tone pairs like 32).
2. Correct my 33 tone-pair rule. I haven't internalised the 33 tone-pair rule, even though I knew about it in theory for a while. I will be happy if, by the end of the challenge, I can start to transform 33 to 23 in spoken sentences without missing a 33 tone pair (basic), without much stumbling over/repeating the words (hard), or without even thinking (hardest).
3. Eliminate common mistakes in vowels/consonants I make in words I already know. 去、出、路、綠、 都、多 are common culprits that I keep getting wrong, even though I technically know the correct pronunciation. Throughout the challenge I will also be particularly attentive to new words/sounds like this that I often get wrong/corrected by my teacher or housemates.
4. Strengthen pronunciation at the sentence level. This is truly where my pronunciation falls to pieces at the moment. As soon as I'm reading out multiple words together, at even a slow speed, my tones and sometimes sounds just go out the window. This is true for both reading aloud (from hanzi) and speaking. I'd like to spend time in this challenge improving my pronunciation during speaking - maybe after correcting the more specific mistakes .

Caveats
Devoting specific time to pronunciation practice is hard as my classwork is pretty intensive for me (~40-50 words a week), some days I have to spend all my homework time just rote learning Hanzi so I can pass tomorrow's 聽寫 or 考試. At minimum, I hope to do at least a little shadowing/mimicking each day. We'll see.

Also if any of you have got this far I'd appreciate any advice on my approach to the challenge, or any tips/tools/advice I can use to achieve some of the goals!

Did the tone testing activity (with my native speaking housemate) outlined on the hacking chinese page. We specifically tested starting tones 2, 3, and 4. We identified that not only is my spoken third tone unclear, but it is also difficult for me to distinguish from the fourth tone when listening.

I have set up a couple recordings of my two housemates reading short wordlists focusing on the third tone (mixed as an initial and second character). I will try mimicking these, and then retesting myself tomorrow to see if there's any improvement.