Going from upper-intermediate to advanced learning? Or something like that.

Hello everybody.

I'm pretty good at English let's say, the writing, the pronunciation, the reading, the listening aren't big problem to me. Okay, the listening and speaking, I do it but with efforts. The speaking it's the hardest for me I think, because I do not use it frequently.

Anyway, I need to improve my English to higher level. Last year I finished 4th level in Berlitz and I stopped attending classes there because of the high prices. I read books (currently The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger) and I'm curious how effective is that? I understand, let's say, 70% of the text... but I have problems with some advanced sentences and the vocabulary. My vocabulary is pretty poor. But, everything I've learned until now is from computers and Berlitz's 3rd and 4th level (I have never really hardly tried to learn English).

Last year I was reading a lot and I noticed a small change in my grammar. Somehow I was learning the whole sentence so I could say it... I don't know how to explain it, I don't have any example right now on my mind... I want to say that I learn by how the sentence sounds, not mechanic (I'm not sure how right is that, though).

I'd like some tips on advanced learning and vocabulary learning (or any learning tips that you'd recommend), please. I'm going to American college next year, so I need to study hard this time. And do the TOEFL test at the end.

Thanks,
Joleh.