diff --git a/tests/test_sft_trainer.py b/tests/test_sft_trainer.py
index 30729a6a41..71173fa2a3 100644
--- a/tests/test_sft_trainer.py
+++ b/tests/test_sft_trainer.py
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@
     AutoProcessor,
     AutoTokenizer,
     LlavaForConditionalGeneration,
+    TrainingArguments,
 )
 
 from trl import SFTConfig, SFTTrainer
@@ -213,6 +214,31 @@ def test_constant_length_dataset(self):
             decoded_text = self.tokenizer.decode(example["input_ids"])
             assert ("Question" in decoded_text) and ("Answer" in decoded_text)
 
+    def test_sft_trainer_backward_compatibility(self):
+        with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as tmp_dir:
+            training_args = TrainingArguments(
+                output_dir=tmp_dir,
+                eval_strategy="steps",
+                max_steps=4,
+                eval_steps=2,
+                save_steps=2,
+                per_device_train_batch_size=2,
+            )
+
+            trainer = SFTTrainer(
+                model=self.model_id,
+                args=training_args,
+                train_dataset=self.train_dataset,
+                eval_dataset=self.eval_dataset,
+            )
+
+            trainer.train()
+
+            assert trainer.state.log_history[(-1)]["train_loss"] is not None
+            assert trainer.state.log_history[0]["eval_loss"] is not None
+
+            assert "model.safetensors" in os.listdir(tmp_dir + "/checkpoint-2")
+
     def test_sft_trainer(self):
         with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as tmp_dir:
             training_args = SFTConfig(
diff --git a/trl/trainer/sft_trainer.py b/trl/trainer/sft_trainer.py
index 322a950177..2c2bc669a2 100644
--- a/trl/trainer/sft_trainer.py
+++ b/trl/trainer/sft_trainer.py
@@ -145,6 +145,8 @@ def __init__(
             output_dir = "tmp_trainer"
             warnings.warn(f"No `SFTConfig` passed, using `output_dir={output_dir}`.")
             args = SFTConfig(output_dir=output_dir)
+        elif args is not None and args.__class__.__name__ == "TrainingArguments":
+            args = SFTConfig(**args.to_dict())
 
         if model_init_kwargs is not None:
             warnings.warn(