Some of the games I use to try to make practise activities are the following:
-sentence gambling. The activity consists on giving the students some sentences (10) which may be incorrect or correct. They have to gamble points on their Right / Wrong answers (50 points very sure, 30 points quite sure...). If they are right, they win the points. If they are wrong, they lose them. At the end, one student or team will be the winner.
-Battleships. I build a battleships chart with characters and actions, instead of number and letters, so they need to ask questions using the actions and the characters to try to find out where the other players' ships are hidden (i.e.: "Did Homer Simpson have a shower yesterday?").
How do you try to make controlled practice activities more communicative and motivating for your learners?
For example, when we are studying a verb tense, I invent a short dialogue using the tense and some of the most common temporary expressions usually used with that tense (I ALWAYS sing / I am singing NOW / I sang YESTERDAY..) and I make the students repeat the dialogue over and over again. Everytime, I change the intonation they have to say it: like a robot / like if you were chewing gum / like if you were asleep / yawning / freezing... and also I rub one word out of the dialogue every time as well. In the end, they have learnt the dialogue (and the temporary expressions) by heart without even noticing and enjoying the activity very much.