"what exactly do the telltales do for you? and how do you read them?"
They make the air flow over the sails visable. The tell tails will follow the direction of flow. You want the flow running generally fore to aft. If the air flow is disturbed, you can see it in the tell tails.
You can make adjustments in helm and or sail to correct the flow for best performance.
Basic adjustments are:
Leech tails in the upper third help avoid hooking the leech to weather from over sheeting. You want the upper leech tails to tuck / fly / tuck etc. alternating.
If they are tucking to the lee side all the time, the leech is hooked to weather, sheet out. If they are flying all the time, you are under sheeted, sheet in.
Light air... sheet out a bit to open the leech. Travel more to center and sheet out a little.
Downhaul causes the leech to open, so downhauling less and sheeting harder should get the leech tighter and make the tails tuck / fly / tuck more.
It is mostly a balance of sheet, traveler and downhaul... but mast bend and rotation some too.
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