A highresolution finite element scheme is presented to simulate 2D shallow w a ter flow in this paper.Compared with the traditional FEM,the present scheme not only ha s high accuracy but also can avoid spurious oscillation when solving the problem s of convectiondominated flows or flows with discontinuities.The numerical res ults of a partial dambreaking illustration agree well with other numerical res u lts obtained by using highresolution ratio finite volume method or finite diff erence method,which shows the reliability and validity of the proposed method.