AN EXERCISE IN LINKING – Mares eat oats
This is a great poem to practice linking. The rule for linking is the final consonant sound moved forward to connect with the following vowel sound. So MAIRZY DOATS is really MARES EAT OATS. Practice with the audio below.
For some background on the poem, according to Wikipedia, Mairzy Doats was composed in 1943 and quickly became very popular. The song’s refrain, written on the sheet music, seems meaningless: Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey. A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe? However, if you don’t think of the spelling and rather the sounds, you may come up with the actual words. Here they are:
Mares eat oats
And does eat oats
And little lambs eat ivy
A kid’ll eat ivy too
NOTE: A mare is a female horse. A doe is a female deer, a lamb is a baby sheep and a kid is a baby goat.
photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/paraflyer/459547910/