I've noticed that my biggest problem with learning Russian has been my inability to remember vocabulary. I can remember (most of) the rules for which gender/case/tense gets what ending, but I spend far too much time looking up words in a dictionary.

Does anyone have any recommendations for effective ways to learn foreign language (particularly Russian) vocabulary? I'm well aware that there's no "shortcut" to learning a language, but maybe some of you have some useful suggestions!

Thanks a lot!