Why can this sentence use の

Japanese
#1

The sentence I am wondering about is

受験生じゅけんせいに向むけてのアドバイスをお願ねがいします。

My understanding is that の should only be used to connect nouns to other nouns when used this way, I double checked both of the の bunpro pages that aren’t the verb nominalization ones as well and both only list the connection types as noun + の + noun.

On top of this, it also accepts not using の too, as perfectly correct. I am really curious at what is going on in this sentence as I see how it wants to be “ideas directed towards students taking exams” and how that wants the の’s normal function but I am failing to see how it is allowed based on everything else I have learned.

Without の it’s just a て form which should really change the syntax of the sentence, no? “direct it towards students AND please give an idea/ideas” but with の it should be closer to “Please give ideas directed towards the students”

So I am confused how の is allowed here but also with it not included how the phrase reads or is being said different with and without it there as I tried to articulate with just the て form being used alone.

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#2

My best guess is that it’s because に向けて is a set construction, see e.g. this link:

So even though it’s a -te form of a verb, it’s still functioning more as a modifier of “test takers” in this sentence. But I’m not sure if including the の is more or less natural, or if it just doesn’t matter.

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#3

I did a quick search and found this:

It doesn’t really explain why, but apparently you can use ての with other verbs. Here’s another example in this N1 grammar point:

Interesting topic!

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#4

Here’s an older comment I wrote about て-form + の in the context of について: について - Grammar Discussion - #17 by nekoyama

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