The first thing you would need to know is PEMDAS. Also stands for parenthesis, exponents, multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. This shows the order you should follow when solving problems like these.
This problem states that the first thing that you would look for is parenthesis. There are parenthesis in this statement, but there's a number before the parenthesis. In this case, your first step would be to take -4(3) - -4(-5x) The first step is using distributive property to -4(3-5x) to get -4(3) - (-4)-5x
