SUMMARYIn this paper, the performance of recently developed nearest-nodes finite element method (NN-FEM) ( Numerical results demonstrated that the accuracy of NN-FEM is nearly unaffected by element distortion. The reason is that in NN-FEM, a set of nearest nodes of a quadrature point is always selected for the construction of shape functions. In this way, the quality of shape functions is solely determined by the locations of the selected nearest nodes, and not affected by element shapes.