It really depends on your style of learning. I find I have to write out vocabulary-- but not just write it out, organize it into thematic lists, and then preferably reorganize it into other thematic lists. Grammar I'm pretty good at, but vocabulary kicks my ass, and remembering gender is nigh impossible for me. Basically yeah. Lotta writing, but more importantly reorganizing into new lists, because this causes (in theory) more neural associative connections which makes the memory more easily available to access. Kinda like linkspamming to get a better rank on Google searches.... can you tell computer metaphors are the modus operandi of cognitive science?