If you’re a native English speaker, the fact that other languages assign a “gender” to every noun is going to seem strange and superfluous, especially considering the gender has no other purpose besides telling you which article (el or la) and adjective ending (-o/-os or -a/-as) to use with the word.
If you’re coming from another language like French or German where nouns are already gendered, the concept won’t seem so foreign, but you still may have trouble remembering the genders of various nouns in Spanish.
Here are a few tips for dealing with noun genders.
Use the O and A rule. In general, nouns ending with o are masculine and nouns ending in a are feminine. When you aren’t sure about the gender of a noun, just follow this rule and 9 times out of 10 you will get it right.
Remember the MA exception. Most words that end in -ma like clima, problema, idioma, sistema, drama, etc. are masculine.
Memorize genders for word endings. Nouns that end in -sión, -ción, -dad, -tad, and -tud are normally feminine.
Always learn nouns with their articles. Include the articles along with the nouns on your vocabulary lists so you can memorize them together.
Pair words with adjectives as a memorization aid. Another way to help remember the genders of new words is to pair each word with an adjective that you can remember easily. Then you only have to recall the adjective to remember the gender of the word. Many students find this method more interesting and therefore more useful than just memorizing the article. For example: To remember if it is el planeta or la planeta, memorize “planeta rojo” and you will know planeta is masculine.