Abstract: Using the standard material basalt as the experimental object, the elements were pretreated by acid dissolution and alkali melting methods, respectively, determined by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry, in both methods good results were obtained. The acid dissolution method is more effective in the digestion of the sample and the extraction of the elements, which made smaller deviation to the standard value. However, the alkali melting process is simpler with shorter time required, and did not affect the determination of Si elements. The latter method is more suitable for the pretreatment of common elements in normal geological samples. The former method is more suitable for the determination of common and trace elements in geological samples which are difficult to dissolve. Both of them need high requirements to the experiment details. In the future, it is necessary to improve the experimental methods and experimental details in order to obtain more convenient experimental methods and accurate results.