Persuasive and Rhetorical Communication

Effective: Fall 2025
Certificate of Achievement Program Map
🖶 Printer Friendly Report

This program map from the 2024-2025 catalog year represents one possible pathway to complete this program. Your pathway may vary depending on your transfer plans and also previous college credit, including AP Test scores, concurrent enrollment courses and high school articulated courses.

I'm ready to get started. What do I do next?

  1. Review this program map to get an overview of the required courses
  2. Meet with a counselor to develop your customized student education plan www.chabotcollege.edu/counseling
  3. Use DegreeWorks, an online student education planning tool, to track your progress toward graduation www.chabotcollege.edu / admissions / degreeworks
Program Description

This certificate develops student skills to become strong communicators by providing a foundation in the available means of persuasion (Rhetoric).


What can I do with this major?

Communication skills are vital in all industries. In particular, students who study Rhetoric often go into legal careers, but many students pursue careers in advertising, public relations, film, tv, and other emerging technological fields. Rhetoric students are often very successful in gaining acceptance into graduate programs, especially in Communication, Business, Law, and Media Studies.


Learning and Career Pathway
  • Communication, Language & Media

Icon Key

= Critical Course = Prerequisite for Other Courses = Prerequisite Required = Required for Major GE = General Education

Semester 1

9 units

COMM 50
Introduction to Communication Studies

3 units
A survey of the discipline of Communication Studies with emphasis on multiple epistemological, theoretical, and methodological issues relevant to the systematic inquiry of human interaction. The course explores communication theories from the humanistic, social scientific and critical traditions.
Course Details:
  1. Strongly Recommended: ENGL C1000
  • Transfers to CSU

    • COMM C1000
    Introduction to Public Speaking

    3 units
    In this course, students learn and apply foundational rhetorical theories and techniques of public speaking in a multicultural democratic society. Students discover, develop, and critically analyze ideas in public discourse through research, reasoning, organization, composition, delivery to a live audience and evaluation of various types of speeches, including informative and persuasive speeches. Formerly COMM 1.
    Course Details:
    1. Strongly Recommended: ENGL C1000
  • Transfers to CSU

    • COMM 46
    Argumentation and Debate

    3 units
    Analysis of contemporary questions through written and spoken discourse. Analysis, criticism, and synthesis of contemporary moral, political, economic and philosophical issues of a diverse, multicultural society, using traditional and modern models of argumentation and debate.
    Course Details:
    1. Strongly Recommended: ENGL C1000

    Semester 2

    7-11 units

    COMM 20
    Persuasion and Communication

    3 units
    Investigation, development, and practice of persuasive techniques, strategies, and theories throughout ancient and modern times. Topics will include rhetoric, propaganda, and formal/informal argumentation.
    Course Details:
    1. Strongly Recommended: ENGL C1000
      2. and
    2. Strongly Recommended: COMM C1000

    COMM 48
    Activities in Forensics

    1-4 units
    Intercollegiate competition in the areas of public address, evidence-based and limited preparation debate, and oral interpretation of literature. Preparation of events includes research, writing, practice, and performance. Other activities may include performance in workshops, festivals, concert reading and the community.
    Course Details:
  • Transfers to CSU

    • List A course

    3-4 units
    Choose one course from List A below
    See the full list: (Click here)

    List A

    Choose 1 course from the list below:

    MCOM 40
    Introduction to Broadcasting

    3 units
    Introduces the history, theory, structure, function, economics, content and evolution of radio, television, film, the Internet, new media and their impact on culture and society. Includes, technological development, programming, ratings, legal aspects, and political and social control of broadcasting in America, and cross-cultural, international comparisons. Regulatory, ethical and occupational impact of the electronic media are also studied.
    Course Details:

    MCOM 41
    Introduction to Mass Communications

    3 units
    Survey of the interrelationships of media with society including history, structure and trends in a digital age. Discussion of theories and effects, economics, technology, law and ethics, global media, media literacy, and social issues, including gender and cultural diversity.
    Course Details:
  • Transfers to CSU

    • MCOM 43
    Advertising Sales & Media Management

    3 units
    Introduction to media advertising sales, including research, sales presentation, and airing of the commercial campaign. Media managerial objectives and procedures, including leadership, motivation, dealing with personnel and operations problems; and managing departments within media organizations.
    Course Details:

    ENGL 4A
    Critical Thinking and Writing about Literature

    4 units
    Develops skills in close reading, critical thinking, analytical and argumentative writing, research, and information literacy through the study of works from major literary genres. Works will include poetry, fiction (short stories and novel), and drama, but may also include alternative genres such as creative nonfiction, graphic novels, spoken word, flash fiction, and lyrics. Primary texts will showcase diverse writers, including marginalized voices.
    Course Details:
    1. Prerequisite: ENGL C1000
  • Transfers to CSU

    • ENGL C1001
    Critical Thinking and Writing

    4 units
    In this course, students receive instruction in critical thinking for purposes of constructing, evaluating, and composing arguments in a variety of rhetorical forms, using primarily non-fiction texts, refining writing skills and research strategies developed in ENGL C1000 College Reading and Writing (or C-ID ENGL 100) or similar first-year college writing course. Primary texts will showcase diverse writers, including marginalized voices. Theme-based units will emphasize the techniques and principles of effective written argument in research-based writing across disciplines. Formerly ENGL 7A (prerequisite formerly ENGL 1).
    Course Details:
    1. Transfers to CSU

      2. PHIL 70
      Social and Political Philosophy

      3 units
      This social and political philosophy class explores and critically analyzes fundamental questions related to society, politics, and ethics. Essential to this course is the study of government and its citizenry. Key questions include: What makes a government legitimate? What rights and liberties should be protected? Is there an ideal size and form of government? Political ideologies like liberalism, conservatism, and socialism will be explored and applied to contemporary issues including: free speech, privacy, and welfare. This class traces the history of social and political ideas from Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, and Lao Tzu to Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Arendt, Rawls, and more.
      Course Details:

      POSC 25
      Introduction to Political Theory

      3 units
      An introduction to the study of political theory. Course introduces the fundamental questions of ethics and politics by analyzing works of political philosophy from antiquity to the present. Emphasizes core themes of political theory, such as justice, power, rights, liberty, and citizenship, and differing conceptions of the state. Students will learn how to interpret, analyze, and critically evaluate political theory texts in order to apply political theory to historical and current political realities.
      Course Details:
      1. Strongly Recommended: ENGL C1000
    2. Transfers to CSU
      3. Total Units: 16-20 units
      This program map is not a guarantee of course availability or financial aid applicability.