Definitely get an oven thermometer, if only to see how your oven responds. Even for ovens with temperature settings, it's useful to know how an oven behaves. My current oven, for instance, runs quite hot and so I find myself setting it at a lower temp than with the oven I used to have. Ovens can fluctuate wildly--once you know your oven's "pattern" you can adjust your cooking accordingly.
It sounds to me like you are looking at a European style stove which typically have "gas mark" numbers instead of temperature settings. And as the US ovens are calibrated in fahrenheit and European ones in centigrade it probably doesn't matter anyway. Gas mark 4 = "hot", which should be around 400F but no two ovens are calibrated exactly equally. You just have to know your oven. For things like roasts you should use a probe thermometer to test for doneness.
America's Test Kitchen found this to be the most accurate oven thermometer:http://www.amazon.com/Cooper-Atkins-24HP-01-1-100-600F-Thermometer/dp/B00125TABM/ref=pd_sim_k_12 Even ovens that you can set to a specific temperature are notoriously inaccurate - my Thermador is always 10 degrees lower than what I set it for, and it does make a difference!
Maybe you're wondering how to know what temperature corresponds to where you have the dial? How about an internal oven thermometer? http://amzn.to/1aFPiqq
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