Silence, like body language, is an essential part of "verbal communication skills" - that's the point I'm making. You can no more learn "verbal communication" without learning to use silence than you can learn "driving skills" without learning to look in the rear-view mirror... (poor analogy, but you get the idea)
Yes and no.
I think "talking more", in the sense of finding more occasions to speak: more meetings, more conferences, etc, would be helpful.
However, I don't think using more words during each of those occasions would improve your verbal communication skills.
To use another popular adage that drives the point home: brevity is the soul of wit.