If I had to give you one advice, it would be this: take all the basic operations, plus, minus, multiplication, division, and exponentiation, and figure out a single normal sentence that describes their functions, like so:
+ "Plus" means "gets combined with". So A + B means "A gets combined with B"
- "Minus" means "gets removed from". So A - B means "A gets removed from B"
x "Times" means "gets repeated __ times". So A x B means "A gets repeated B times"
÷ "Division" means "gets broken up into groups of". So A ÷ B means "A gets broken up into groups of B (how many?)"
^ "raised to the power of" means "gets multiplied by itself ___ times". So A ^ B means "A gets multiplied by itself, B times"
That's an example, but you should make up wording that works for you and memorize it. That will act as your foundation for understanding what you're looking at. Well, that combined with one simple word which is "PEMDAS". Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication/Division, Addition/Subtraction. This tells you the order to do things in. So first you do everything inside parenthesis. Next you do all the exponents. Next, multiplication and division get grouped together, they have the same level of priority, so you just do whatever one you encounter first when reading the problem from left to right. Same goes for addition and subtraction which are next. They also have the same level of priority, so you just do whichever one you run into first, reading from left to right.
SO, let's try it:
(1 + 2) x 3 + 1= What???
PEMDAS tells us where to start. First you do everything the parenthesis, which is 1 + 2. Remember 1 "gets combined with" 2. So the answer is 3. Now we have
3 x 3 + 1= What???
Next after parenthesis, PEMDAS tells us to do Exponents. There aren't any in this equation tho, so we move on. Next is Multiplication and Division. Reading from the left, the first multiplication or division sign we see is multiplication of 3 x 3. Remember 3 "gets repeated" 3 times. So, if you add 3 different 3s together, you get 9. Now we have
9 + 1 = What???
PEMDAS tells us after Multiplication and Division, we move to Addition and Subtraction. Reading from left to right, the first addition or subtraction sign we run into is the + sign in 9 +1. It's the only operator left. Remember 9 "gets combined with" 1, which gives us our answer, 10. Now er have
10 = What???
Except that in math it won't normally be "What???" it will be an X or a Y or an A or some other variable. But they work exactly the same. At the beginning, we wanted to know what "What???" was equal to. Now we know it's equal to 10. Another way to say that is "we solved for What???". So if "What???" was replaced with "Z" in the original equation, and the person who gave us the equation said "solve for Z", you would do exactly what we just did, and you would find out that when you solve for Z, it's equal to 10.