The common practice of mixing two languages in real instructional time negatively affects CI instruction. Don’t do it.
So what to do? Just go slower and stay in L2. Ten minutes L2 and ten minutes in L1 is not unreasonable. That may be all you can get. 15 minutes in the TL and 5 in L1 would be better.
Whatever, you want sustained and uninterrupted comprehensible minutes – as many as possible – in the target language. Again, it is the mixing every few seconds or minutes of the two languages that must be avoided. That’s what messes the students’ language acquisition process up.
What language do the kids respond in? Either one. Just act like you don’t notice if they use English. They are communicating. Student answers in English go away over time but only if you stick to your guns and stay in the TL.
When you stay in L2 your students are gaining proficiency fast. When you mix the two languages, the unconscious mind is handed garbage and doesn’t know what to do with it. Don’t mix them. You want sustained periods in the TL.
Years ago we had the Ten Minute Deal here but no longer use that term, but here is a link:
If you search the term “Ten Minute Deal” you can find more articles – they started here in 2013.
But there is an even bigger mistake that you could make right now than mixing languages – it would be to ask your simple questions to the class in a way that they can’t understand what you are saying. That’s the biggest deal.
What a mistake that would be! There you are, standing in front of students with only a few weeks of experience with the language and you just spent time in the town meeting building a feeling of trust and respect in the classroom, and then in QL2 you started asking questions in the TL that they can’t understand.
So just go as slow as you need to in order to make yourself understood. The national standard is not: “Teach Them All the Words” – it’s “Communication”. The secret to making this happen, as you will learn, is to use WBYT whenever you want to use a new word. So simple!