reading books and newspapers improves vocabulry

Yes it does. And doing cross word puzzles will improve your vocabulary and you'll have fun and a challenge doing it.

Absolutely. A quick example for you: two childhood friends of mine, brother and sister, had different reading habits. The sister is two years older and was also a bookworm like me. The brother wasn't, and when he heard us chatting about books we red he felt, he can nerver reach his sister's level and it's not even worth to try. Now, 30 years after, he is working in IT field, is head of a department, and has to write reports. He admits that he has often problems with finding right words, and understands, if he had read more, the writing were much easier for him. His sister has never felt a lack of vocabulary, she has written schoolbooks together with her husband.