Furhter improve writing

[caat]

I have been in USA for more than 10 years. I work as a programmer. This type of work doesn't require too much communication interaction at work. My current English level is sufficient to perform well at work. But at the same time, there is little opportunity for further improving my English. My reading and listening skills are near perfect. But my writing and speaking skills are relatively poor. I would like to start with working on improving writing skill first. I want to know how to change writng style, be able to write longer and add more flavors to the expressions. It seems these can't be accomplished by just writing more!? Could anyone give me some suggestions and strategies?

[Humble]

Hi, Caat,
Welcome to the forum.
I am responding, though my English is surely just a tiny fraction of yours.
I think you could practice all kind of discussions in real life and on the Net. There are all kinds of forums. Every day I jot down everything I find interesting from the linguistic point of view.
Just to give you an idea, here is what I have entered on (among other things) in the last two days:

They just follow the herd...
Why dredge up old quarrels?
The primary sense of the word...
The thread seems fractured enough...
It gives ample time for...

All these are no problem to understand, my wish is to activate them, to fill my memory with patterns, idioms and collocations. I must have written about 100 pages since last April.

Best wishes.