diff --git a/Lib/test/test_io.py b/Lib/test/test_io.py
index 967018ea453..f0b38b6f7a9 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_io.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_io.py
@@ -232,6 +232,17 @@ class IOTest(unittest.TestCase):
             else:
                 self.fail("1/0 didn't raise an exception")
 
+    # issue 5008
+    def test_append_mode_tell(self):
+        with io.open(test_support.TESTFN, "wb") as f:
+            f.write(b"xxx")
+        with io.open(test_support.TESTFN, "ab", buffering=0) as f:
+            self.assertEqual(f.tell(), 3)
+        with io.open(test_support.TESTFN, "ab") as f:
+            self.assertEqual(f.tell(), 3)
+        with io.open(test_support.TESTFN, "a") as f:
+            self.assert_(f.tell() > 0)
+
     def test_destructor(self):
         record = []
         class MyFileIO(io.FileIO):
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 30c3a0f7e30..ca5eef1dcb1 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -76,6 +76,11 @@ Core and Builtins
 Library
 -------
 
+- Issue #5008: When a file is opened in append mode with the new IO library,
+  do an explicit seek to the end of file (so that e.g. tell() returns the
+  file size rather than 0). This is consistent with the behaviour of the
+  traditional 2.x file object.
+
 - Issue #3997: zipfiles generated with more than 65536 files could not be
   opened with other applications.
 
diff --git a/Modules/_fileio.c b/Modules/_fileio.c
index 0f09ecd8a3b..fbe4189a8da 100644
--- a/Modules/_fileio.c
+++ b/Modules/_fileio.c
@@ -41,6 +41,9 @@ PyTypeObject PyFileIO_Type;
 
 #define PyFileIO_Check(op) (PyObject_TypeCheck((op), &PyFileIO_Type))
 
+static PyObject *
+portable_lseek(int fd, PyObject *posobj, int whence);
+
 /* Returns 0 on success, errno (which is < 0) on failure. */
 static int
 internal_close(PyFileIOObject *self)
@@ -296,6 +299,16 @@ fileio_init(PyObject *oself, PyObject *args, PyObject *kwds)
 			goto error;
 	}
 
+	if (append) {
+		/* For consistent behaviour, we explicitly seek to the
+		   end of file (otherwise, it might be done only on the
+		   first write()). */
+		PyObject *pos = portable_lseek(self->fd, NULL, 2);
+		if (pos == NULL)
+			goto error;
+		Py_DECREF(pos);
+	}
+
 	goto done;
 
  error: