In this page, http://www.ucblueash.edu/now/2016/03/07/let-us-hear-you-student-survey/, the first sentence says:
Students – We need your help in letting us know why you attend UCBA, how you rate your experience, and how we can make improvements for the future.
"letting us know why you attend UCBA" is the gerund phrase I am interested in. So I have some questions:
- Is the gerund phrase in this case called an object of the preposition "in"?
- If we will remove the preposition "in", what will it be called now? Just a normal noun?
- So if there is no "in" before the gerund phrase, what is the correct term to call the gerund phrase in the sentence?
For questions 1 and 2, according to a user here, https://ell.stackexchange.com/a/58097/19539, using "in" in many cases is not necessary. For example, "Thank you for your help in cooking dinner" could also be written as "Thank you for your help cooking dinner". So my last two questions are related to the correct term to use if there is "in" and if there is no "in". If there is no "correct" term for that, at least the "common" or "usual" term instead.