[CorrectHorseBat]

>but the second that voice starts speaking sentences and I need to understand in real time, I freeze up. The real progress is conversing!

What helped me a lot was doing a lot of listening exercises. Start with concentrating on what you can recognize, not on what you can't. Then listen again and and again and again trying to recognize more and more.

[criley2]

That's what I do and it helps and many apps let me do just that. Repeating it, reading the hanzi, reading the pinyin, and it all makes sense.

But there's something about the "conversation" between a real human or an AI voice mode where you're not on the rails. It's real time and you have to lock in and understand. That's where the magic happens!