The present paper explores the use of connectives in the persuasive discourse of 30 Tunisian third-year English majors and 30 Tunisian third-year Arabic majors. The study aims to look at the potential impact of Arabic rhetoric on Tunisians' EFL writing. A quantitative analysis of the students' Arabic and English essays on the same argumentative task shows the predominance of additive connectives at the clause and sentence levels and their overuse in Arabic productions. Causal connectives are the second most used category in both Arabic and English corpora. The two groups also showed comparable limited repertoires. A qualitative analysis of the data disclosed further similarities and differences in the ways connectives are used, combined and misused.