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See the red and black arrow on the compass below?
It is called the compass needle. Well, on some compasses it might be red and white for instance, but the point is, the red part of it has a real habit of pointing towards the earth's magnetic-north pole. That fact has been found to be quite usefull for many a year now.
Let's review: RED needle points "NORTH". Got that? That's basically what you need to know. It's as simple as that.
What if you don't want to go north, but rather, in a different direction? Hang on and I'll tell you. There's this turnable thing on the compass. It is called the Compass Housing. On the edge of most compass housings, you will probably find a scale; from 0 to 360. Those are the degrees or the azimuth (or you may also call it the bearing in some contexts). And you should have the letters N, S, W and E for North, South, West and East. If you want to go in a direction between two of these, you would combine them. If you would like to go in a direction just between North and West, you simply say: "I would like to go Northwest ".
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