Kindly R-K "jobs cleaning up"

[Isafroward]

(1) Thank you SO much for your kind reply.

(2) Just in case you get a really clever student next term who

asks a similar question, I wanted to share something with you.

(You have helped me so much over the months that I feel a sense

of gratitude.) An extremely experienced ESL teacher told me that

probably it would be best to parse "cleaning up the beaches"

as a complement to "jobs." In other words, a gerund used as an object

complement. That"s how I shall R-K that sentence. Thanks again. I bet

your top-notch students will be serving up a lot of challenging questions.

Thanks.

Here are the steps I would go through with my students:

Unemployed people along the Gulf of Mexico are being given jobs cleaning up the beaches.

What is the complete verb? --> are being given
Who or what are being given? --> Unemployed people (along the gulf of Mexico)
[A]re being given what or whom? --> jobs
What question does cleaning up the beaches answer? --> what kind of jobs?
If it answers what kind, we know that the part of speech is what? --> adjective
If it's an adjective, it modifies a noun. What noun? --> jobs
Does the adjective look like a verb but act like an adjective? --> yes
Then the phrase is participial, modifying the noun jobs

This is where I would arrive. What do you think of this interpretation?

Dea

[TheParser]

Thank you so much. As your students probably tell you:

That's awesome!!!