How do I improve my writing and speaking skills. I use Lang 8 but because of the way vocabulary is being learnt, which takes time to learn a word, I cannot fully express what I want to say so far. Speaking more difficult as I always try to read everything out loudly but still I feel it's not enough. Do I mimic and try to do the same as a Japanese native would?

Well I'm in the same boat as you, I think writing and speaking will always be the weakest skills for language learners. I imagine you need more immersion (move to Japan/put dramas on all the time so you get used to way of speaking), and just try to speak and write more. Write dialogues and act them out if you can't find another speaker, perhaps? Though it's pretty easy with the Internet these days.

You mean reading out loud is difficult? Or do you mean like speaking Japanese on the spot with someone? If reading out loud is difficult then; probably read out loud a lot more and maybe record yourself. If speaking Japanese on the spot is hard(which I think it always will be lol) just try to immerse yourself with actual people to speak with.

This kind of thread doesn't seem to generate a lot of responses. I think people aren't sure how to improve speaking and especially writing in self-study. You can get by okay without much writing ability, but if you develop that skill it will really step up your overall language competence.
Are you interested in being able to write by hand or is computer/phone sufficient?

A large part of advancing these 'output' skills is to develop conscious ("noticing") of the things you read and hear and run with it. Talking to yourself, you can try out that foul language you heard in an anime that's not really appropriate in a conversation.
You can also try some of these materials:
http://shop.whiterabbitjapan.com/japanes...?limit=all
If you end up getting any of those books, please update your progress on this thread! (I've been eyeing the 'Nikki No-to' book for a while.) Lang-8 can feel like the only place to practice writing, and it fosters a lot of 'negative transfer', i.e. unconsciously translating from your mother tongue, resulting in even the corrections sounding unnatural.
In your first language, I'll bet that writing is sort of the last frontier. You need a lot of exposure before you really feel comfortable writing, but you can take baby steps in that direction by trying exercises or to emulate things you see elsewhere. Writing also varies greatly depending on the purpose, whether it be a text message or a formal letter.

I hope this thread picks up because this is something I've wondered about and should probably pursue more proactively.

I can read a lot of intermediate sentences without much trouble, but if you ask me to form a sentence in the same way I would be completely lost (there's just words and grammar I would never use as they're not in my active vocab). That kinda sucks, but I hope everything will sort of make sense in the future especially when I'm in Japan.

I find writing by hand (for example my core6k deck), helps a lot with improving your knowledge and spelling of words for production use. A lot of words before I could not even tell if there was a う　in it for example, but sitting down and writing the kana helped me a lot with my hearing skills also. Personally, I think writing is essential to any language, no matter what people say about not using it often.

Lang 8 takes effort.. I have a lang 8 deck even which I record some of my mistakes and corrections, not sure how helpful that is. But I think if I just spent more time writing stuff I will improve Overall it's all about effort and doing something, a few steps here and there and you'll eventually get better.