How to learn the basic word list

Fredrick Bodmer in his book The Loom of Language writes:

The most importan= t [practical suggestion] is to concentrate on learning a relatively small = class of words before trying to learn any others. This class includes part= icles, pronouns, pointer words and helper verbs. There are several reasons= for doing this. One is that a battery of about one hundred and fifty such= words for ready use, supplemented by a nodding acquaintance with about a = hundred other, includes a very high proportion of the words we constantly = use and constantly meet on the printed page.