Hi Laurie,

The textbook or the student at this point will probably say to "collect like terms". By this they men to gather together the terms that have an x in them and the terms that are just numbers. Here are the terms with an x in them

2x + 1 + x - 4 + 4x + 1

so gathered together they become

(2x + x + 4x) + (1 - 4 + 1)

Hence you have 2 + 1 + 4 = 7 x's and 1 - 4 + 1 = - 2. Thus the expression simplifies to

7x - 2

I hope this helps,
Penny