It would be especially useful to review the manual pages or any documentation on the following resources:

• ls(1) - description of what the command does

An archive is a single file that contains many file making it much easier for to move a bunch of files instead of moving them one at a time. It will effectively keep copies of your files in one place. They can also be compressed to reduce the overall size. In short they are very useful. -c will create well -f specifies the name of the archive file.