Do you have any recommendations re drilling exercises for tones?

I will tell you something good about tones: once your brain "clicks" and you learn how to properly pronounce them, they are super easy.

I can tell about you the way they taught us during the first preparatory year at my Chinese university. Basically, first we learned how to perfectly pronounce all 声母 and 韵母, then they taught us the tones, and we would have to practice reading every possible combination of 声母 and 韵母 using all said 4 tones. To put it in layman's terms: we had to be able to read every possible Pinyin combination using all existing tones.

My recommendation is to build a good foundation, and then move up. Learn how to distinguish the tones perfectly, and don't stop practicing until you can read mā má mǎ mà and any Pinyin combination clearly. Trust me, once you understand the sound and pronunciation of every tone, reading any word will become baby stuff. Sadly, the only way to achieve this is by practicing a lot, and checking videos/material that teach you the differences between the tones.

I believe we are both in the the Element chat, so if you need I might be able to send you recordings that will help you.

Just flash cards and memorising the tones associated with each word?

You will have to memorize which tones each word you learn uses, but the most important thing is to first learn the tones properly.

I think there are different good ways to memorize the tones of words:

• Reading the words loudly
• Writing the word's Pinyin with tones
• Definitely using flashcards.