This study was mainly designed to investigate the extent to which the cooperatingrnteachers are aware of th eir mentoring role, the extent to which they discharge theirrnmentoring duties and factors that affect of the teachers' mentoring activities.rnThe subj ects of th e study were English teachers in five cooperating secondaryrnschools in Addis Ababa who have served as 'mentors' in the last five yea rs, studentrnschool directors and English department heads, the teaching practice supervisor,rnhead of the university's teaching practice coord inating unit and teachers in thernDepartment of Foreign Languages and Literature Addis Ababa University (AAU).rnThe data collecting tools used were questionnaire, interview and the studentrnteachers' diaries. Some of the data are quantitative while others are qual itative inrnnature. Therefore , both quanti tative and qualitative data analysis methods werernused. For th e analysis of the quantitative data, descriptive stati stics like, frequency,rnpercentage and mean were used, whereas, the qualita tive data were described andrnexplained.rnThe study has general ly shown th at the cooperating teachers are aware that they arernsupposed to serve as 'mentors' and that then are ready to work with the studentrnteachers. However, there are pieces of evidence in the data that show that thecooperating teachers do not seem to be successfu lly discharging their mentoringrnduties.rnFor example, the study has noted the following as factors that affect the cooperatingrnteachers successful discharg ing of their mentoring duties shortage of the teachingrnpractice time, weaker liaison between the university and the coopera ting schools, thernuniversity's failure to give due attention to the student teaching practice program andrnlack of enthu siasm and under performance in the teaching practice on the part of thernstud ent teachers.