Advice on how to reach LPE level

Recipes for success at more advanced levels
Study regularly and often
Intersperse study with real contact with the language
Study includes analysing grammar and vocabulary of articles in the Guardian Weekly, doing grammar exercises, doing reading and listening comprehension exercises
Real contact includes watching original version DVDs, watching and listening to the news in English regularly, regularly reading newspapers like the Guardian Weekly without a dictionary
Regularly reading modernday fiction without a dictionary

Interesting facts and figures
How many words does a native speaker know?
The most careful studies show that even university-educated speakers top out at about 20,000 base words--and that's receptive, not active. For example, see the following study, which shows the average for university-educated speakers at about 17,000 base words: 

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Cervatiuc-VocabularyAcquisition.html 
You need to read more!
In a week, a typical intermediate English learner who attends 4 hours of English classes learns maybe 5 new words or phrases from reading 2 pages in English plus another 5 from other sources (listening, conversation with teacher). They may write down more than this, but after a week they remember less than 50% of the knowledge.
If you read 20 pages per week (which is only about 3 per day), you will learn, mathematically, about 50 new words or phrases per week. If you read 40 pages per week (about 6 per day), you will learn 100 new words or phrases per week. This means that you're learning in 1 year what the average learner learns in 10 years.
Start with a graded reader, and try to read it without a dictionary.
Take a level test to determine which course to take and which graded reader to read. You will find the tests on the website below.
http://www.penguinreaders.com/pr/teachers/the-right-reader.html#2
Penguin Level 1 test = A1 Vocabulary size: 300 headwords
Penguin Level 3 test = A2 Vocabulary size: 1,200 headwords
Penguin Level 4 test = B1 Vocabulary size: 1,700 headwords
Penguin Level 5 test = B2 Vocabulary size: 2,300 headwords
Penguin Level 6 test = C1 Vocabulary size: 3,000 headwords