Malaysia was a former colonial country and as such science was taught through the medium of the former colonial language, English. The population is multilingual with Bahasa Malaysia as the official national language. In order to unify the nation, Bahasa Malaysia was adopted as the medium of instruction in all secondary schools since 1978. After almost four decades of Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction for science and mathematics, research conducted by Rollnick (2000) found no evidence of difficulties arising from the use of Bahasa Malaysia instruction in the teaching and learning of science. Even though every now and then new words were coined and imported words were introduce as it does not possess the vocabulary for scientific concepts.
