I strongly agree with Kerstin!
A lot of students learning German who advance to an intermediate level wonder why they still cannot get German grammar right at that level. In almost 100% of those cases, the inability to assign the correct grammatical gender to a noun is the cause, and in hindsight, they wish they had memorized each noun with its article (and its plural form, of course). German is a heavily declined language. Therefore, the knowledge of the correct grammatical gender is essential. In order to memorize the grammatical gender, use colors (e.g. blue for DER words, red for DIE words, and yellow for DAS words), put colored sticky notes with the word on items and furniture on everything in your home, and connect new words with stories to old words. For example, if you have memorized that the word for table is a DER word (der Tisch), and you are learning a few more new der words, such as 'der Stuhl', 'der Teller', or 'der Vorhang', you could picture the table, chair, plate, and drapes all together as a set of DER words.
Either way, there are many methods to tackle this issue, but the most important thing is that you HAVE TO do it, if you ever wish to become a fluent and grammatically correct speaker of German.
Good luck!
