The article examines the use of connectors in oral narratives of 27 adult American learners of French, who are classified in four groups according to length of instruction and type of learning environment, i.e. classroom or immersion or mixed. The patterns of acquisition are found to be in general quite similar to those of child LI French learners, including a routinised use of one or more markers which serve as pause fillers. Surprisingly, even very proficient learners show overgeneralisation of some connectors, in particular of transitional connectors (alors, donc) and discourse-structuring particles (eh bien, bon), whose functions are relatively opaque.