Lead with analysis, not description. The most common reason business communication assignments lose marks is spending too many words explaining what a theory or model is, and too few words applying it. Your marker already knows what the Shannon Weaver model is. What they want to see is whether you can use it to explain a specific communication failure in a real organisational context. Get to the application quickly.
Match your tone to the assignment format. A business report and a reflective essay are assessed very differently. Reports demand structure, formal language, and evidence-based recommendations. Reflective essays require first-person voice, personal professional experience, and a clear connection between what you observed and what the academic literature says about it. Using report language in a reflective essay or reflective language in a report signals to your marker that you have not understood the purpose of the format.
Use frameworks as tools, not decoration. Mentioning Hofstede's dimensions or Berlo's SMCR model in passing does not add marks. Applying those frameworks to the specific scenario your assignment is built around and explaining what that application reveals is what earns them. If a framework is relevant, commit to it. If it is not, do not mention it.
Source credibly and recently. Business communication is a field where practice evolves quickly, particularly in areas like digital communication and remote working. Citing academic work from 2012 to support a point about virtual team communication in 2025 is going to raise questions. Where current practice is relevant to your argument, use current sources industry reports, recent journal articles, and contemporary case studies alongside the foundational theoretical texts your module requires.