It’s a good idea to get into the habit of using parentheses
when substituting numbers in for variables.
If you have parentheses in your original problem, change them to brackets as you substitute (to avoid confusion).
Now plug in the values for b and c into the problem.
So we have [(-5) + (-3)].
Simplifying inside the brackets, we get [(-8)].
So -8 is the answer.