Later he was Senior Lecturer in English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, before being appointed full professor in the Department of English as a Second Language at the University of Hawaii in 1981. After completing his PhD, he taught in Indonesia and was then appointed specialist in applied linguistics at the Regional Language Centre Singapore, under the auspices of the New Zealand Government. He has worked in many parts of the world, including New Zealand, Canada, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United States. in Applied Linguistics from Laval University (a French-Language University) in Quebec City, Canada in 1972.

Richards obtained a Master of Arts degree with first class honours in English from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1966.