Tabulature is for the beginning guitarist a perfect way to understand a little bit of music notation on paper. It works like this:

There are six lines representing the 6 strings. You read de lines from top to bottom as where the first string is E, The second B, The third G, The fourth D, The fith A, The sixth E.

The numbers represent the fret positions on the guitar.

Example Figure1 :

The disadvantage of tabulature is that you cannot show the length a note takes. If you know the piece of music it is not a problem. But if you don´t it is better to understand the regular music notation. The exercices shown on this site are in the example shown in Figure1.