The purpose of this study is to find out whether or not teachersrnrnin Addis Ababa Zone Four Junior Secondary Schools use vernacular whilernteaching English, and if they do, to what extent they use it.rnOf the junior secondary schools in the zone, six were chosen atrnrandom and from each school, one grade seven English teacher was chosen,rnrnmore or less, at random. Each t eacher was recorded, the recording timerndepending on the l ength of oral communication within the 40-minuternperiod.rnThe steps followed in the analysis of the data, in general werernclaBByfi~thewhole discourse into Amharic (vernacular) and Englishrn(medium of instruction) and finding out what share of it is vernacular,rndividing the discourse of each side (teach ers and pupils) into vernacularrnand medium of instruction in the same way, and computing frequencyrn( the number of vernacular words used per minute) for each, and lastly,rnclassifying the vernacular used into Bellack's four pedagogical moves:rnstructuring, soliciting, reacting and responding. To facilitate thernunderstanding of this analysis, full t ext of the four moves is given.rnThe results show that, of the totil classroom discourse ofrnteachers and pupils, 71% is English (medium of instruction) and 29%rnAmharic (vernacular).rnOf the total discourse of teachers, 69 .4% is English and 30.6%rnAmharic . Of the tot a l words used by pupils and t eachers, the teachers'rnshare is 81.9% and the pupils ' share 18.1%. On the whole the pupilsrndo less than 20% of the talking, and the teachers more than 80% of it.rnOn the average, about ~ of the t eachers ' total classroom discoursern(30 . 6%) is vernacular, and the tot a l average frequency of thir use ofrnvernacular is 17.5 words per minute.The results, further, show that the type of Englishrnlesson (passage, vocabulary or grammar), or the type ofrnexcercise (objective or subjective) affect the extent of thernuse of vernacular, which varied not only from teacher tornteacher but also from teachers to pupils.rnThe total average of the teachers' move, in order, isrnstructuring (59.8) soliciting (24.8), reacting (13.3%), andrnresponding (2.1%). Generally speaking, almost all thernresponses were done by the pupils, and almost all thernsolicitations by teachers.rnIt was thus ooncluded that only ~ of the time allotedrnfor the teaching of English is really used. The pupils haverndeveloped the habit of hearing in English and speaking inrnAmharic. This habit is likely to increase in magnitudernbecause teachers tend to insist on making the pupils speakrnin Amharic even when they are able to speak in E~ish.rnTranslation also seems to be inefficient because there arerninstances of mistranslated and confusion of concepts.