ChristianKl’s suggestion of drama lessons doesn’t seem like it would increase verbal abilities more than say reading,
Reading, writing, speaking and listening are all somewhat distinct skills; my guess would be that if you wanted to optimize verbal abilities, you’d want to encourage all four. Drama lessons sound like they would help with the speaking and listening skills in a way that reading doesn’t.
Also I’m under the impression that if you have four interrelated skills A-D, even if you were only interested in optimizing A, spending some time on each of B-D also lets you learn A better. I don’t have a formal cite for that, but at least this article discusses it.
Reading, writing, speaking and listening are all somewhat distinct skills; my guess would be that if you wanted to optimize verbal abilities, you’d want to encourage all four. Drama lessons sound like they would help with the speaking and listening skills in a way that reading doesn’t.
Also I’m under the impression that if you have four interrelated skills A-D, even if you were only interested in optimizing A, spending some time on each of B-D also lets you learn A better. I don’t have a formal cite for that, but at least this article discusses it.