[General] support him to do something?

[maoyueh]

Another quick question, please. Is the sentence below acceptable, natural, or not natural? Thank you.

There are many ways to support students to obtain a college education.

 

[probus]

It is more natural to say: There are many ways to support students in obtaining a college education.

 

[billmcd]

Another quick question, please. Is the sentence below acceptable, natural, or not natural? Thank you.

There are many ways to support students to obtain a college education.

The sentence is fine/natural.

 

[5jj]

It's not to me.

There are 52 COCA citations for support noun in verb+ing and none for support noun to verb.

 

[emsr2d2]

It's unnatural to me too. Generally, we support someone "in" something.

I wholeheartedly support you in your goal to run the London Marathon next year.
I support you in your efforts to get a degree at the age of 92.

 

[maoyueh]

It's unnatural to me too. Generally, we support someone "in" something.

I wholeheartedly support you in your goal to run the London Marathon next year.
I support you in your efforts to get a degree at the age of 92.

Hi, 5jj and emsr2d2,

Thank you most sincerely for your valuable opinions.

In fact, I keyed in the search string "support him to" in COCA and found 10 citations.

Perhaps in practice the structure "support him to do something" is less frequently used than "support him in..." . Am I right?

Regards,
maoyueh