Mrs Caisley is a lecturer at the School of Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology, has been an examiner in speech and drama for more than 30 years and is vice-chairwoman of Speech New Zealand.
She visited Dunedin recently and gave a talk on "Freespeak: The art of extempore speaking" at the New Zealand Communications Association conference.
She warned in an interview that the texting revolution had damaged the overall ability of some New Zealand teenagers to communicate through the spoken or written word.
Being able to send text messages via telephone was clearly useful, but habitual texting tended to discourage young people from expressing their views at greater length and in more detail, she said.
Television had also damaged some of the previous spoken communication within families, with many family members no longer sitting round the dining table and discussing things over a meal.
Ironically, youngsters arrived at New Zealand primary schools with an ability to chat confidently among themselves.
However, this natural ability often declined during their schooling, with much of the emphasis given to written communication.
"We need to be able to put our ideas into that natural fluent language that children learn in the first five years [before school]," she said.
"They don't think `this is something difficult'."
Taking a spoken language course through Speech New Zealand clearly had benefits.
"We do find that the ones that have done the training are better."
Through his Fred Dagg sketches, satirist John Clarke had extracted some "very clever" humour in his portrayal of the somewhat monosyllabic New Zealand male.
But there was a big price to pay for limited abilities to communicate.
"It contributes to a lot of our relationship break-downs."
It was sometimes only by speaking to someone else that a person managed to discover and clarify his or her otherwise unknown thoughts and feelings.
Learning how to clarify one's own thinking, and to communicate more clearly could have significant personal benefits, and would help keep more relationships together.
Better spoken communication skills would also help people to gain better paid jobs, she said.
