As a researcher, you will need to be able to present your work verbally to different people, at different times and places, and with different reasons for why you are presenting. The times where you present your research may be highly formal (like at a conference) or casual. The people listening may be experts in the field or people who have no idea what you are researching. You may be presenting your research to gain funding, or just to get others interested in what you do. Either way, you will need to be able to present your research well! The first thing you need to do is evaluate the following:
Who you are talking to will change how you present. A group of school kids will need a different presentation than your colleagues.
Critically examine why you are presenting your research. Are you asking for funding? Educating someone on the difficulties of your research? This will affect what you present and what you focus on while presenting.
Academic conferences are not the only places we present our research. The way we present there is very different from the way we would present our research to our friends, and even that is different than how we would present our research to our perspective in-laws.
Some researchers balk at presenting their research to non-experts. They believe that their research is too complicated for laymen to understand. This is a logical fallacy. The problem is not in the complexity of the research or in the intelligence of the listener, but it is actually a problem with the researcher. If people cannot understand your research, you are presenting it poorly. Take the theory of relativity, for example. It a complex physics theory that encompasses space, time, and gravity. However, that doesn’t mean that a laymen cannot understand the basics of it. It was at one time explained simply to me as “In your perception, when you are doing something boring, time passes slowly. When you are doing something fun, time passes faster. Time is considered a constant, but the way other entities interact with it can make it inconstant. Gravity can affect time and space the same way having fun affects your perception of time.“
Since most people you meet will likely not be experts in your field, it is a good idea to prepare how you will present your research to them. Keep in mind the following:
Just like with creating content for posters, crafting a verbal explanation is best done by using the KISS Principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Say enough to get the idea across without getting weighed down by the details. If the person wants more details about your research, they can (and will!) ask. Try to include these points as succinctly as possible:
The problem (what’s the question?)
Its significance (why should we care?)
How your particular research addresses the problem (what's your strategy?)
The experiments/research performed (what did you actually do?)
The results obtained (what did you actually find?)
The conclusions (what did you think it all means?)
Future prospects (where do you go from here ?)