Can't help you with the specific bit for RC, but I am a glider pilot so I can tell you a bit about the rest.
The controller will control aelerons (controling roll) rudder (controlling yaw) and elevator (controlling pitch) if you lauch your glider on a wire from a winch, you will also need a winch release control.
Imagine you have launched your aircraft by bungee (some clubs in the UK use a bungee for real aircraft!!!!!) or by winch, it is now airbourne and will slowly decend unless you can find some air that is going up. In the summer, you get columns of rising air under cumulous clouds called thermals, when the wind blows against the side of a hill, it will be forced up by the hill. What you have to do is find, and fly in, this rising air.
The principle is illustrated by imagining that you are walking slowly down a staircase. In this case, you go down. Now imagine you do the same thing on an escalator that is going up, although you are still walking slowly down the rising of the escalator takes you up.
All this is easy in theory, but demands a lot of theoretical knowledge, the piloting skills to be able to fly a plane right on the edge of its envelope, and the ability to really feel an environment that you can't see, smell, hear or touch. I am a pretty good pilot, but I do not think that I would last 5 minutes with an RC aircraft, because half of the input I need, I get by being in the aircraft and feeling what it is doing.
A couple of words of warning. First, where there is lift, there is always sinking air or turbulance closeby and you can run out of height very quickly indeed; second, you only get one shot at your landing so get some lessons before you do it first time, otherwise it could be a VERY expensive hobby.
For furhter advice try wikepeadia with a search on gliding or any book by Derek Piggot, the UK's aknowledged god of gliding, whose fine writing has literally saved my life.
All the best