Southern Hokkien: An Introduction is a research-based textbook originally designed for non-heritage learners who acquired a reasonably good proficiency level of Mandarin and wish to learn the Southern Hokkien language outside its natural linguistic environment.

　　It uses a situation-based approach in which dialogues are designed to reflect scenes in real life rather than classroom situation. Grammar and vocabulary explanations follow a primarily contrastive approach, focussing on similarities and differences between Mandarin and Southern Hokkien. Though mainly based on dialect variants spoken in Taiwan, Southern Hokkien also includes references to dialect variants spoken in other Hokkien speaking areas.

　　The textbook is complemented by a number of excursions and explanatory comments which help not only to follow required linguistic rules and cultural conventions but also to gain a basic understanding of the reasons behind some of these rules and conventions.

Bernhard Fuehrer (Fu Xiong / Po3 Him5 傅熊) trained at National Taiwan University (BA) and in Vienna (PhD), and began learning Hokkien in the 1980s in Taipei. He is Professor of Sinology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

　　Yang Hsiu-fang / Iun5 Siu3-hong1 楊秀芳 trained at National Taiwan University (PhD) where she is Professor at the Chinese Department and the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature. She has published extensively on Hokkien linguistics.