The article deals with the problem of conceptual aspects of professional training for English language teachers in the UK. It is found that many curricula of British universities are based on the technology and procedure of exclusively professional training of future specialists, whereas general scientific and additional intellectual training is incorporated into extracurricular activities as proved by the ratio of study time allocated to different courses. Humanities and social sciences courses provide students with fundamental knowledge and the ability to navigate in the ever-growing volume of scientific knowledge, possibility and knowledge of social interaction. General professional and specialist courses cultivate professional mastery of future specialists and the ability to express, if necessary, professional mobility. It is clarified that English is a broad subject, which comprises three complementary elements studied either separately or combined. They are the following: English Literature (interpretation and analysis of literary texts and study of the history and theory of literature), English Language (the study of spoken, written and multimodal communication, their historical development and their distinctive levels of analysis: phonology, grammar and lexis) and creative writing (the practice of writing, the study of the literary and cultural contexts of writing and the exploration of the relationships that writing generates between writer, publisher, text and audience). It is concluded that professional training of English language teachers in the UK is based on conceptual aspects of such principles as neobehaviourism, liberalism, progressivism, social reconstructivism, cognitivism and humanism.