Intensive Tausug was written to serve as either a self-study pedagogical grammar or an interactive classroom textbook aimed at introducing the student to the fundamental skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in the language of Jolo Island and vicinity (Pata, Marunggas, Tapul and Lugus), and the lingua franca of the Sulu Archipelago, Philippines. This book is divided into twenty lessons, each one centered around a number of grammatically, thematically or culturally relevant dialogues. New vocabulary that occurs in the dialogues immediately follows each dialogue.

Intensive Tausug was designed with an aggressive curricular agenda under the assumption that most users of the book will have already proficiency in Tagalog or another Philippine languages, so much of the description focuses on phenomena in Tausug that are divergent from Tagalog, rather than Austronesian features that would seem exotic to an English speaker.