I’ve tried various language exchange websites such my MLE, iTalki, and plenty of others. Always with the same results. I just simply don’t have enough knowledge for it yet, which is a shame 
I expected the oppotise, in fact, seeing as the convos would be mostly be in English so they’d get a lot of practice in! ^^
I guess I’ll stick to discussion boards for now.
Most Japanese on those sites are terrible at English and just want to speak to a foreigner (in my experience), the same as you were expecting to speak English with some Japanese mixed in.
This is a big generalisation, and some are pretty competent , but its a skill, so its a pyramid, unskilled at the bottom and skilled at the top.
This is the method I am currently using only with HiNative, but usually what happens is, they’ll start suggesting to express my senteces with completely different grammar constructions (which most of the time I don’t know) and then I am totally confused and discouraged…
Everyone already gave some really good advice so I’ll just add a little bit on top: write your own sentences. Anytime I learn a new grammar point, I take a few minutes to write my own sentences using that grammar point, and I keep a “diary” of them in a notepad on my phone. They don’t have to be these really articulate/advanced sentences, just something that YOU composed yourself. I think the more you do that, and if you do that as soon as you’re learning a grammar point, that it will start to stick with you better. I’m still fairly new too, but that’s seemed to work best with me.
I haven’t got to Japanese grammar yet, but from learning other languages, the most important thing is to practice, practice, practice.
Workbook exercises or exercises online - find a good resource for these, and especially for grammar points that you find hard, drill, drill, drill. It can be tedious, but in the long run, it will pay off!
A really good source for easy Japanese reading that I don’t see mentioned enough is the PIBO iOS/Android app, which is actually geared towards Japanese children (or their parents). It is a library of over 200 children’s picture books and you can read I think two of them per day for free, which should be plenty. While there is a lot of vocabulary (even small Japanese children know a lot of words), the grammar is fairly simple, and everything or almost everything is written in hiragana rather than kanji. And because they’re picture books, you can see what’s going on in the story. Maybe not as mature for adults as manga, but usually easier to read, and a good practice for getting used to simple Japanese. Also, you can listen to the stories read out loud which is great for listening practice.
Just find this topic, thank you. All these advice will help me a lot. 
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