The purpose of this research is to study the new curriculum in the topic of modern languages in the upper secondary school, and compare the curriculum from year 2011 with the one from year 2000 and thus try to find differences in the content and wordng. The research also aims to investigate teachers' interpretations and understanding of the new curriculum. The study is divided into two sub‐studies and those are based on the two methods of text analysis and interview. Text analysis of policy documents is made parallell with some aspects found in the background materials of the upper secondaryschool reform, which can be summarized as precision and globalization. My results also show that the subject presentation in the new curriculum of modern languages was diminished in scope and summaized. The interview study connects to the aspects that have emerged in the text analysis. The results of the interview study is that teachers find it difficult to interpret the new curriculum in an equivalent way, and this probably has to do with the fact that they have not received a sufficient or equivalent preparation in the new policydocuments. The general opinion of the teachers is that they have noticed the attempts of  precision in the new curriculum, but they would wish even more precision. The new curriculum has mostly changed their teaching in the aspect of the new grading scale.