1-forms

Can anyone give me a somewhat simplistic explanation of 1-forms?  For some reason I'm really stuck on this, I understand that they're a linear transformation mapping point and a vector to R.  (I'm guessing they actually map to all of C but for sake of learning I'd appreciate it simplified as my understanding of complex analysis is virtually nonexistant at this point in time.)  I don't even understand their purpose, except that a differential is a type of 1-form.  The wikipedia article was a bit over my head & the wolfram article wasn't much help either.

>>9
Linear algebra by Kenneth Hoffman and Ray Kunze explains where determinants come from and why they behave like they do.

The same book says:
"A multilinear function on V^r [V a vector space] will also be called an r-linear form on V or a multilinear form of degree r on V. Such functions are sometimes called r-tensors on V."