Abstract
To improve English language teaching practices in Kazakhstan, qualified and competent teachers are needed to fulfill students’ needs and meet educational goals. Thus, this paper compares perceived competence levels of pre-service and in-service English teachers by using European Profiling Grid (EPG) framework with respect to their language proficiency, and provides deeper understanding about the definition of an effective teacher by investigating the efficacy of ELT programs in terms of raising effective English teachers. To improve English teaching outcomes and teacher quality in relation to teacher education curricula, perceived competences and opinions of in-service and pre-service English teachers play a crucial role. This research aims to demonstrate what is happening in teacher education programs in Kazakhstan, how in-service and pre-service teachers perceive themselves in terms of language teacher professional competences. In total 65 pre-service and 40 in-service English teachers participated to the research. The mixed method research was employed by combining both qualitative and quantitative methods in order to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. To analyze the qualitative data thematic analysis method is used in order to process the obtained data SPSS 25 was used. It was found that in-service teachers had higher professional competence levels than pre-service teachers and senior ELT students had higher levels of teaching competence then freshmen ELT students indicating to a statistical significant difference across groups.