Coursebook exercises with non-connected sentences

Coursebooks often have guided practice exercises where you find single sentences numbered, under each other, students are to use the appropriate word or the words in brackets in the right form.
I often find that students simply neglect the meaning they do the task automatically. They are simply too lazy to think and say one or another answer, not really wanting to get it right. It is funny  but  also a waste of time. When I see that my students are missing the point with tasks like these I try to make them imagine the situation depicted in the task.

An example:
Sentence from the exercise:
Billy has eaten/ate all the watermelon form the fridge.

Digital teens tend to quickly choose one of the options without too much thinking. Let’s colour it a bit:

How old is Billy?
What does he look like?
What was the last thing he ate?


On Facebook you can start a conversation about 'crucial' thing like Billy's hair, it may make the exercise a bit more memorable. If  these comment threads are fun enough students might take up looking for the  the meaning in these seemingly monotonous tasks.

Talent pageant for grammar exercises

Sometimes out of some mysterious reason you might want your students to practise a specific grammar point. The Facebook way:
Suppose your grammar point is Present Perfect vs. Past Simple.
post this link on your group wall:
http://www.agendaweb.org/verbs/present_perfect-exercises.html
(Agendaweb is a great resource for all kinds of web-based exercises, basically a multitude of links categorised, for grammar I go there first.)

Ask the members of the group to find 3 links that are relevant to your point. (I clicked 10 times to find 3 relevant links.) This stage helps raise the awareness of what exactly these structures are and increases learner autonomy.
They are to post their threesomes of links in comments.

Semi-final:
After having done the exercises they choose one favourite.
You post an update ?FAVOURITES? for example, they post their favourites in the comments section.
Final:
Now they have to vote for the absolutely favourites. For that everyone has to do all the favourite exercises (one per group member) and vote in a poll (Facebook question).

Now the three best exercises are the winners.

Then create a group document and tell everyone to copy in there a certain number of items from the exercises per person, depending on the size of the group. You might need about ten items.
Now this may serve as a test. Or if you want to take it more seriously you just make slight changes in the sentences  and alter the order.

Through this procedure you make your students aware of the given grammar structure, you hopefully give them ample amount of practice (many sets of different types of exercises disguised as a talent pageant for exercises :D:D) and even more autonomy as they can have a say about the test.
They may get acquainted with a number of free online exercises that are corrected automatically, they can choose sites that are suitable for them for further self-study.