No data to support this, but HSK 1-3 and Most Common 100-200 seem to lean heavy on using exclamations (啊，呀，吧，呢) over other reasonable content words in a sentence. Additionally, I find that the adverbial 一下 also appears quite frequently. I’m well aware they contain more meaning than just that of exclamations, some even serving as discourse markers, tone softeners, etc. but let’s set that aside for sake of discussion.
Example:
孩子，你为什么哭【呀】？说给我听听。
Two thoughts/questions:
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To my understanding the exclamation may be the cloze statistically, but I wonder if it serves the learner more to choose the next best cloze from the sentence.
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Is there a way to re-cloze the sentence?
I’ve noticed that the likelihood of observing this phenomenon decreases substantially in higher levels but I’m curious about the thoughts of others here. I might also be fundamentally misunderstanding the meaning of “most common.”